


The Way Back Home

by twitchbell



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Crossover, Developing Friendships, Drama, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), background Tony/Pepper, but there may also be some shameless making stuff up for reasons of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2020-12-16 11:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21035399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchbell/pseuds/twitchbell
Summary: Graham, Yaz, Ryan and the Doctor find themselves each appraised in turn as the man snaps his gaze from one to the other. His eyes are brown and almost disconcertingly sharp given that the shadows under them suggest at the very least a lack of decent sleep. Still, in view of his earlier panic attack, he's pulled himself together with commendable self-control. When he finishes his scrutiny, Graham assumes he's filed the whole lot of them under 'mostly harmless' as his next words aren't at all conciliatory or thankful: they're clipped and querulous."Who the hell are you people? Where am I? Oh, andwhy? Why am I here?"~Or, Tony Stark takes an unplanned trip into space, gets rescued by the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions, decides to explore an alien city with them, and then it all goes pear-shaped.





	1. Definitely Not Friday

"We are safe here, aren't we, Doc?" Graham asks.

He's sitting with Ryan, Yaz and the Doctor on the invisible floor of a see-through bubble. The bubble itself is clinging tight to the TARDIS which, in turn, hangs in space like a Christmas ornament adrift from its tree. Graham had made the mistake of looking down – once – only to immediately regret it.

The Doctor had suggested a better view could be found from outside the TARDIS and they'd all agreed to this without stopping to think exactly what she had in mind. It turned out what she had in mind was sticking them in a translucent force bubble and although it gives them total protection from the vacuum of space, it certainly doesn't feel like it. Graham can't shake off the impression that he's suspended inside a large and fragile soap bubble that might pop at any moment.

"Of course we're safe." The Doctor clearly has no such worries as she regards the black expanse surrounding them with barely contained excitement. "Right! Keep watching. If I've timed this right – and I have – the Rift will be here any minute now… "

Graham, Yaz and Ryan swallow their misgivings, stare into the void and wait.

When the Rift appears, it's almost imperceptible at first until a pale blue shimmer unzips in a thin strip of light across the darkness. Then it widens and twists. Slowly to begin with, and then faster and faster until it's spilling out tangled ribbons of turquoise, ultramarine, indigo, sapphire, azure… too many hues to name. The effect is stunning, a never-ending river of bright flowing … _blueness_ encompassing every shade from light to dark and back again.

"Ladies – Lady – and Gentlemen, I give you the Kyanicia Rift!" The Doctor flourishes her hands, delighting in playing Ring Mistress to her audience, as the strangely beautiful blue light floods across their faces. "Marvel at the glowing magnetic waves, the winds of hot plasma and showers of electrons. I promised you spectacular. Did I deliver or what?"

"Oh, you delivered all right!" Yaz grins a little giddily at Graham, and he grins back. Spectacular is too small a word to do it justice, he thinks. The places they've been and the things they've seen … at this rate, they're going to run out of superlatives.

"Proper awesome!" Ryan's face splits in a smile, and then his face clouds. "That thing's not going to whoosh out and get us, is it?"

The Doctor waves her sonic screwdriver towards the light show and reads the scan to reassure him. "The Rift's stable right now, Ryan. Just like my force bubble is stable even though none of you looks convinced. What? You thought I hadn't noticed?" Then the Doctor's face falls into an unexpected frown. She shakes the sonic and frowns some more. "Now that's odd."

"Doctor!" Yaz calls out urgently, squinting as she points into the light show. "I think there's something out there."

"I think you're right." The Doctor swings her sonic back out in the direction of the Rift and rapidly digests the readings she obtains, muttering to herself as she does so. "Small spacecraft? Unlikely to be a missile. Too erratic. It's tumbling in all directions. Unless it's damaged. Dimensions are about human-sized. And it's human-shaped. And – oh!" She jumps up, fizzing into action. "I've got life signs, but they're starting to fade. We're going to need to intercept and rescue. Right, you lot, back in the TARDIS. I need to collapse the bubble."

Ryan, Graham and Yaz waste no time in hurrying inside and the Doctor follows hot on their heels, supplying them with a running commentary. "The TARDIS isn't designed for short hops and I'm still running in the new systems but, no choice. Got to go for it. Yaz, pull that lever over there. No, not that one, the other one, yes, that's it! I'm streaming life signal data over to you."

Ryan and Graham stand alongside her and gaze intently at the display that the Doctor throws up on the TARDIS wall. It shows them the scene outside in real-time as the mystery object drifts closer, revealing glints of metallic red, gold and silver on its exterior. The Doctor ignores this in favour of muttering calculations under her breath, darting around the console and inputting coordinates and instructions.

"Looks like a robot," Ryan says, tilting his head on one side to try and get a better angle on what he's looking at.

"The Doc says there are life signals, though," Graham reminds him.

"Is it a spacesuit, then?" Ryan speculates. "A lost sightseer? Someone who came here to view the Rift and then sort of floated off?"

"Maybe, but whatever's in there, it looks like the life signs are reaching critical. Doctor!" Yaz raises her voice. "I've got lots of red flashing lights. It's not looking good."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it! I need to calculate the trajectory and then …" The Doctor shoves and pulls a bewildering number of levers in quick succession and the object outside vanishes abruptly.

"Yes! Gotcha!" the Doctor crows.

A suit of armour appears on the floor of the TARDIS. But this is nothing like the armour worn by knights of old, for all that it features hard metallic plating and narrow eye slits. Not only do large sections of the plating gleam in scarlet and gold, but it's clear it also has the capacity for deep space travel and the ability to ensure the survival of its occupant – for a certain amount of time, at least. When Graham looks more closely, he can also see a very un-medieval energy source set in the chest plate. It glows blue-white, flickering like faulty strip lighting.

Yaz checks her monitor and gives a sigh of relief. "Vital signs are steadying, Doctor."

"Excellent! Okay, first things first." The Doctor scans the armour with brisk efficiency and then assesses the information the sonic is gathering. "Hmm. The suit is … gold titanium alloy. Mostly. The occupant is male, human. Completely. And possibly a soldier because this armour is designed for combat, although I can't quite see… ah! Looks like its power's a bit on the blink right now."

"That might be as well." Graham injects a note of caution. "If he is a soldier, I mean. Depending on whose army he belongs to."

"The TARDIS interior exists in a state of temporal grace," the Doctor assures him. "It's linked to the TARDIS's telepathic circuits. Detects hostile intent so no weapons can be used."

"Brilliant," Yaz says. "Can I have a pocket version, please? Sounds like something I could do with for policing Carver Street on Saturday nights."

The Doctor beams at her. "Yes, it's brilliant. When it works. Which it doesn't always." She changes the subject with a hurried, "Right, let's make our visitor a bit more comfortable."

"Take it you've got a tin-opener on that thing, then." Graham nods at the sonic with a raise of his eyebrows.

The Doctor grins back. "Indeed I have. Faceplate first, I think. Let's just find the right – ah! There we go!"

The gold plate retracts seamlessly into the outer edges of the helmet, revealing a white man with short dark hair and a trim goatee beard and 'tache. At the sudden influx of fresh air, he takes a quick, shallow breath and opens his eyes. He stares at the three of them for a second, but Graham has the eerie impression that he isn't seeing them at all. Then his eyes fill with absolute shock and fear before he flings up both arms, crossing them protectively in front of his face.

"Whoah!" Ryan lets out, startled.

"Steady on, mate," Graham says in concern. "It's okay, you're safe now."

"Friday? Hello? _Friday_!" The man has an American accent, and there's more than an edge of panic in his voice. He keeps his hands shielding his face and his breathing is fast and ragged.

"I'm afraid I don't know what day it is," Yaz answers him calmly, no doubt calling on her police training to try and bring down his level of emotion. "I could try and find out for you, if you like." She throws a look of enquiry at the Doctor.

"Well, it's definitely not Friday. Technically, it's not any day of the week. Can't measure time like that in the Vortex." The Doctor interprets Yaz's shake of the head and hurries to add, "But we can say it's Friday … if that helps."

A response isn't immediately forthcoming, but the Doctor's confusing attempt at reassurance doesn't appear to have made anything worse. In fact, Graham thinks the exchange between her and Yaz is giving their visitor a chance to regain composure.

The man starts to steady his breathing, which suggests he's got some coping strategies for anxiety or panic attacks. Several long seconds later, he lowers his hands and stares at them. His expression is now more confused than panic-stricken, which is a definite improvement. He's older than Graham had first assumed; there are threads of grey in his hair and he's definitely heading towards middle-age if not already there.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y." He spells it out for them, making clear that he doesn't mean the day of the week; Graham wonders if it's an acronym. He speaks quickly but, in contrast to his earlier panic, his voice now has a ring of self-assurance. "FRIDAY's my A.I. The interface program for the suit. Guess she's out of range."

"Oh, I think that's a pretty safe bet." Graham gives him a wry smile. "Can you get out of your armour on your own or do you want a hand?"

There's enough power left in the suit for it to split apart like a clamshell, and the chest light winks out once the operation is complete. Their visitor waves away any help to stand up although whether he does so out of wariness, misplaced machismo or sheer stubbornness is unclear. He isn't in a uniform but is wearing jeans and a plain dark tee-shirt. He spends a moment or two checking his armoured suit before straightening up and turning his full attention onto them. Graham notices that while he isn't a particularly tall man, he has an air of easy dominance about him: he seems to take up a lot of space.

He doesn't speak. Instead, Graham, Yaz, Ryan and the Doctor find themselves each appraised in turn as he snaps his gaze from one to the other. His eyes are brown and almost disconcertingly sharp given that the shadows under them suggest at the very least a lack of decent sleep. Still, in view of his earlier panic attack, he's pulled himself together with commendable self-control. When he finishes his scrutiny, Graham assumes he's filed the whole lot of them under 'mostly harmless' as his next words aren't at all conciliatory or thankful: they're clipped and querulous.

"Okay. Who the hell are you people? Where am I? Oh, and _why_? Why am I here?"

"Well, we rescued you." Graham blinks, a little thrown by the stranger's idea of how to greet the people who saved his life.

"You sound British," says the man in a weirdly accusatory way. "Are you British?"

"Most of us are," Graham answers with complete honesty. He could've said a lot more but one step at a time seems the most sensible way to go given the less than promising start to the conversation.

"And you're in the TARDIS," Ryan says, adding with exaggerated helpfulness, "That's a ship that travels in space and time."

"Wait. What? Back up!" The man jerks his hand palm out towards them, effectively ordering them to shut up in the most annoying way possible. "This is a ship? A space-time ship? _This_?" He sounds less than convinced by Ryan's statement as he takes a swift look at his surroundings. "This is a room full of … weird … _things_."

"Yes, it is." The Doctor, who'd observed the interplay with sharp curiosity, joins the conversation. "Well observed. It's very definitely full of things. And suppose some of them might seem a bit weird at first glance. But there are also things like this display screen." She waves a hand at the wall, and her next words do nothing to contradict the impression that she's explaining everything in the style of a children's TV presenter. "If you look, you'll see that it shows space. Which is where we found you. Floating."

The man frowns at the display as if the image offends him and then demands, "Why was I floating in space?"

"That's a very good question. We found you by the Kyanicia Rift – that's the big blue ribbony thing on the display. As for how and why you were there, we thought you might be able to help us out with that one. Oh, you asked who we were. Well, this is Yaz, this is Graham, that's Ryan, and I'm the Doctor." She gives him a friendly smile. "This is my TARDIS."

"I see." He doesn't. Graham can almost see him trying to fit the information he's getting into his existing framework of knowledge and failing dismally. He knows the feeling. "So, you're, what? The captain of this space-time ship?"

"TARDIS. She's called the TARDIS. And just call me Doctor. Now, how about you? Can you tell me your name and what military organisation you belong to?"

The man had started to step away from them as if about to embark on an exploration of the TARDIS. Now he comes to an abrupt halt and turns to face the Doctor, his face falling into a dark frown as he snaps back at her with, "What? You think I'm a soldier?"

"I was thinking that might be the case, yes." The Doctor is quick to respond, appraising him with a steady gaze. "Because you arrived here in what looks very much like a weaponized suit of armour."

He stares at her for a moment, visibly confused, and then frowns even more. "And? Isn't it common knowledge I'm a civilian, not a soldier? Yes, I used to design and sell weaponry to the U.S. military. And now I don't. I design it for me and I use it for defending the Earth."

"Defending it from what exactly?" the Doctor queries. Graham thinks this is a perfectly reasonable question, but the response it gets is anything but.

"From what? You really need to ask that after all that's gone down in the last few years?" For a moment, the man sounds completely taken aback by her line of questioning. Then his expression hardens and his lips tighten. His next words are fast and fierce and aimed like verbal bullets. "Earth needs defending from every damn thing that wants to wipe out humanity! And I've seen what's waiting there, beyond Earth, out in the cold and dark. That's where the monsters live and they know where we are and one day they are coming back and we have to be ready for them. Do you understand?"

A momentary silence follows this unexpected tirade. He might have claimed not to be a soldier, but Graham thinks he sounds like one, and like one who's been fighting battles for way longer than is healthy.

"Well, I'm starting to get an idea." The Doctor counters his raised voice with her own far more measured tones. Apart from a slight lift of her eyebrows, she looks unfazed by his hostility. "But, speaking as a bit of an expert in what lies beyond Earth, I have to say that's not all there is out there."

"There's us for starters." Graham tries to inject a note of normality. "And we don't want to wipe out anything. Except for a cheese and pickle sandwich. I could murder a cheese and pickle sandwich."

His efforts seem to work because the man takes a deep breath and turns away from them, making an obvious attempt to calm himself. There's a slight easing of tension. A much-needed one.

After a pause, Ryan asks, "What exactly did you mean, saying it's common knowledge you aren't a soldier? It's not common knowledge to us. We've only just met you. We don't know who you are."

"What?" The man turns back, this time sounding not so much angry as genuinely bewildered. "Are you people for real? Where have you been for the last few years? Are you all on some hush-hush mission in space? Is that it? The Brit Family Robinson?"

"We were in Sheffield a couple of days ago," Yaz tells him, keeping to the facts. "But I still don't recognise you. Are we supposed to know you?"

"I'm Tony Stark." He pauses, clearly expecting some recognition at the announcement of his name. When none is forthcoming, he throws up his hands in genuine disbelief. "Oh, come on! One of you at least must have heard of me. Tony Stark? The well-known genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist ….?”

“Playboy?” Yaz repeats with a curl of her lip. “Really? You think that’s something to brag about?”

“What? No!” Tony runs a hand through his hair impatiently. “It’s not … forget the playboy. That’s old. And you’re all missing the point! For God's sake, I'm _Iron Man_!" He gestures at the armoured suit as if that will make things clearer.

Unfortunately, it doesn't.

"You do know that suit's not actually made of iron?" the Doctor points out. She's likely speaking tongue-in-cheek, Graham thinks, or maybe she imagines this is valuable information that Tony lacks. Knowing the Doctor, it could well be both at the same time. She continues with, "Gold Titanium Alloy Man would be more accurate. Although I suppose that might not sound so dramatic. If you're going for dramatic, of course. Which …" She squints at him and the suit, and then shrugs her shoulders. "Hot rod red? Yeah, you probably are."

"I'm fully aware of what it's made of, Doctor Know-All. Because _I_ made it!" Tony snaps back at her, obviously not the slightest bit amused. "The media named me 'Iron Man'. Didn't you know that? Have you all been living under a rock in Sheffield or something? I mean, how the hell can you not know who I am?"

"Look, ditch the attitude, yeah?" Ryan is becoming increasingly irritated, which doesn't surprise Graham. After their encounter with Jack Robertson, no-one is going to feel much like playing nice with an egocentric American. "We rescued you from death, remember? And all you've done since then is rant at us like we're idiots. Tell you what, why don't you start by explaining exactly what you've done that we're supposed to have heard of?"

"What have I done? Where do I even …" Tony stops himself with an effort before continuing in a slightly less aggressive fashion. "Okay, I'll bite. Let's pick one. The Battle of New York. The attempted invasion of Earth by giant space whales and an army of cybernetic bipedal reptiles. Remember that?"

"No, we don't remember that," Yaz tells him with some firmness. "Because it never happened."

She looks as if she's going to say more, but then decides against it. Graham wonders if she is now considering the possibility that Tony Stark is suffering from delusions and that antagonizing him might not be a helpful way forward. Graham is starting to have similar doubts.

"It never happened," Tony repeats back at her with ominous calm. "That what you're saying? There was no Chitauri invasion and I didn't have to fly a nuclear bomb through a portal in space to – "

"Hang on a minute!" The Doctor interrupts, her excited expression indicating she's had a eureka moment. "A portal! That's it!"

She swings her sonic up at Tony, causing him to lift his hands and step back in alarm.

"What? What the hell is that? Is that a weapon?" he demands, suddenly looking a lot less assured.

"No, it's a screwdriver," Graham explains, deliberately deadpan. "No need to worry. The Doc's only giving you a quick scan."

"With a _screwdriver_?"

"It's a sonic screwdriver," the Doctor tells him cheerfully. "Handy little gadget. Does all sorts of things. Right now it's scanning you, and your energy signal is ever so slightly … off. Didn't spot it before. Too busy rescuing you." She peers at the sonic's readings and nods her head. "Tony Stark, you are wrong in some tiny _weird_ ways."

Ryan mutters something which Graham assumes amounts to 'no shit, Sherlock' or the equivalent.

"Wrong?" Tony looks understandably agitated at this vague but alarming assessment. "How am I wrong? _What_ weird ways?"

"Oh, don't worry, you're not _wrong_ wrong," the Doctor says, being helpful in her own inimitable style. "But you're wrong for here. You see, the Kyanicia Rift is a temporal rift, a weakness in space and time. Objects – or people – can come through from one location and time to another. And that's what's happened to you. Because you don't belong here, Tony Stark. You're not from our universe."

Tony stares at the Doctor. Then he opens his mouth only to shut it again a moment later without saying a word. The Doctor's revelation has left him speechless. Graham is sure it won't last long

"Not from _our_ universe?" Yaz echoes. "So how many universes are there, then?

"More than you might imagine," the Doctor tells her. "A lot more. There are multiple universes within the cosmos. And by multiple, I mean an infinite number. And each alternate universe carries its own different version of reality. My hunch is that Tony comes from somewhere that's really, really similar to yours, which is why I didn't spot it straight away. Some of them are a lot harder to access than others. So let's hope Tony's isn't one of those."

"Yes." Tony finally finds his voice. "Let's hope that. Let's … really, really hope that."

He looks pretty shell-shocked at the Doctor's revelation but, Graham notes, he doesn't argue with it. He's obviously managed to process his situation with sufficient speed and understanding to understand that he's not in Kansas anymore. And if that doesn't mark him out as the genius he claims to be, it does at least suggest he's something more than an unhinged loudmouth with an exaggerated sense of his own importance.

Maybe there's hope for him yet.


	2. Just Being Friendly

"I … need a moment, okay?"

Tony steps backwards, raising one hand to ward off the Doctor and her cohort before he turns away from them completely. He doesn't want them watching him as he processes the implications of what he's just been told. Not when he's fairly sure most of them already hate him or, best case scenario, think he's an idiot. Which is totally his fault for behaving like … an idiot. Not that that's anything new.

His head is still spinning from the Doctor's diagnosis and all he wants to do is sit down, but the TARDIS appears devoid of chairs. He settles instead for stumbling up shallow steps and lurching between giant golden crystals until he can prop himself up against the hexagonal console. The giant crystals are hinged, arching over towards a final, central crystal. There are so many damn crystals that he's starting to feel like he's wound up in some kind of crazy crystal healing academy.

Tony then turns his attention to the console but that only makes his head hurt even more because it's just a jumble of objects, with spinning things and levers, and resembles the leftovers of a steampunk rummage sale – is that an _egg timer_? How in hell can this be a space-time ship? He closes his eyes for a moment and hears something rattle down a small chute next to him.

"Move your foot away from that pedal or we'll be up to our ears in custard creams before you know it," the Doctor says in his ear. She sounds agreeable enough, but Tony still flinches as she drops something by his hand and he opens his eyes to find she's presented him with a small anaemic cookie. He regards it with distaste and then moves his foot.

He can sense the faint thrum of something powerful coming from the console, or the crystals. Maybe they mesh together in some way to form an engine, but, if so, they have no signature he recognises. Of course they don't. This is a space-time ship in a different universe. And it appears to be crewed by a bunch of weird British people who will soon be offering him a calming cup of tea and a crumpet if he doesn't start to get a grip. Tony thinks that through and is rewarded by a moment of clarity. Crewed by, but not belonging to. Right.

"So now you understand why we've never heard of you," the older man – Graham – is saying.

"And now you know we haven't been living under a rock in Sheffield after all." And that's Ryan, the younger – more antagonistic – man. "So we'd no idea you were – what? Some sort of superhero?"

"Some sort of superhero," Tony repeats flatly. "Yes. That would be me." He draws in a deep breath, straightens up and turns to stare at the Doctor. "Who are you?" he demands. "Where are you from? And don't give me some 'we're from Sheffield' bullshit. _They're_ from Sheffield." He indicates everyone who isn't the Doctor. "_You_ are not. You're not even from Earth, are you?"

"No, I'm not," she agrees cheerfully.

"Is that your actual – er – body?" Tony gestures in her direction and winces. That came out weird, and he isn't going for weird at all.

"It is at the moment." The Doctor looks confused. "Why? Is there something wrong with it?"

"What? No! No, nothing at all," Tony says hastily. She'd only gone and made it weirder. "Just wondering if this is your natural form or – "

"She's not a monster hidden in a human body if that's what you're getting at," Graham interrupts, apparently taking pity on him. "And she's not going to run amok and murder you."

"Fine. All good, then." Tony takes a metaphorical step backwards out of the hole he's dug for himself.

"Glad we got that sorted!" the Doctor says brightly. "Now, Tony, it might not be a straightforward process, but the TARDIS will be able to plot a course which will get you back to your Earth." She sounds pretty positive that can be done, which is … something.

"Great!" Ryan reacts to the Doctor's words with what Tony considers unnecessary enthusiasm. "Don't suppose they can manage without you, what with you being a – what did you call yourself? Oh yeah. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

"No, they won't manage!" Tony hits back, his frustration getting the better of him in spite of his best intentions. "Because Earth – _my_ Earth – needs me if we're going to have any chance of surviving what's coming for us." God, could he sound any more egotistical? But that didn't make it a lie.

"Why you in particular?" Yaz, the other woman, at least sounds interested even though she has her arms folded and her expression isn't especially welcoming.

"Because no-one else flew through a hole in space. No-one else saw what I saw. And no-one else understands it," Tony tells her. Not strictly true. Thor seemed to get it, but as he wasn't on Earth right now, that's of little use as far as Tony is concerned.

"The cold and the dark where the monsters are." The Doctor repeats his own words back at him, proving that she'd at least listened to his earlier ravings. "Which you saw when you went through the portal with the nuclear weapon."

"Okay, then," Ryan says. He still doesn't appear especially approachable, but it appears he's curious enough to want answers. "So why doesn't anyone understand what you're telling them?"

Tony takes a long breath and releases it slowly. He needs to think hard about how he's coming across to this … motley crew. They might be weird and annoying, but they're not bad people and he has nothing to gain – and a lot to lose – if he doesn't make at least some effort to play nice. Just because it would be easy to dump his fears and frustrations on them, it doesn't mean he has to.

"Why would they believe me?" he says, stepping away from the console and down onto the main floor. He musters up his best self-deprecating smile. "I'm volatile, self-obsessed and don't play well with others. There's an actual report that says that, by the way." It says worse than that, but he feels it would be less helpful for them to hear Romanoff's detailing of his compulsive behaviour, self-destructive tendencies and textbook narcissism.

"Sounds pretty accurate to me," Ryan returns, a glint in his eye.

"Ryan," the Doctor reproves him mildly. Then she stares straight at Tony. She's adopted a very Mary Poppins set to her face, but it was the strict, no-nonsense Poppins that administered smackdowns and not the nice Mary that gave out spoonfuls of sugar. "I don't like labels. And even if you do think they describe you, you can always work on becoming something better or different. Of course, if you're using them to stage-manage people by lowering their expectations of you, that's a whole other issue."

"Wow," Tony says, blinking. "You think that's what I'm doing?" Of course that's what he's doing. He just hadn't expected her to catch on quite so fast.

"You tell me," the Doctor returns, throwing the ball back into his court without so much as a pause for breath.

"I think that might be … a very palpable hit," Tony admits when it becomes clear she's waiting for an answer. "Thanks, I guess, for taking me to school. I do have one question for teacher, though. Not label related."

The Doctor raises her eyebrows, her expression quizzical. "What, just the one?"

Tony makes a conscious effort to please, holding her gaze a little longer than necessary and tilting his mouth in the suggestion of a smile. "Well, it's a big, complicated question."

The Doctor remains unmoved by his charm offensive which is disappointing considering he's spent years perfecting it. "Is it really? Go on."

"The TARDIS? Your space-time machine? How does it work?" Tony's not feigning interest; he genuinely wants to know.

"You're right, that is a really big, complicated question."

"Oh, and I have one more. Can I take a look at your sonic screwdriver?" Tony points at the tool currently still gripped in the Doctor's hand.

"I don't know you well enough to show you my sonic screwdriver." The Doctor shakes her head firmly. "So that would be no. And in answer to your first question, the TARDIS is a Type 40 space and time machine and she travels through the Vortex, which is the structure of the space-time continuum. And if that sounds like gibberish … what was it I used to say? Oh, yes! I remember! Alternatively, you can think of it as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey … stuff."

She delivers the words with an expression that suggests she thinks her younger self was an idiot. Tony finds it hard to disagree.

"You really used to say that?" Yaz looks less than impressed. "Seriously?"

"Yes." The Doctor sighs. "I'm afraid I did. I know. Bit rubbish, isn't it? But it did an excellent job of stopping people asking questions when I couldn't give them an answer they'd understand. So there was that."

"The first part of what you said doesn't sound like gibberish to me, and I'm a quick study," Tony persists in a spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained. The more information he gets, the less out of his depth he'll feel. "Can you get me, I don't know … a Space/Time Travel 101 to bring me up to speed on the key concepts? No? The lady's not for turning? That it?"

"You know what? You're right," the Doctor says. "You _are_ a quick study. Because, no, I'm not changing my mind."

There's a long pause during which it becomes clear that this is all the Doctor intends to say on the subject. Tony spreads his empty hands in silent protest and stares at her. She stares right back.

"What? That's it? I ask nicely and you slam the door in my face?" In spite of his best intentions, Tony knows he's doing a piss-poor job of hiding his disappointment. He can live with the fact that the Doctor's immune to his charm, but being deprived of information is really ticking him off.

"Why are you so interested in the Doctor's technology?" Ryan is clearly suspicious of his motives, like he thinks Tony is planning to hijack the TARDIS or something.

Tony shrugs. "Why wouldn't I? I don't like not knowing things. My life is all about knowing things so I can be at the top of my game when – "

"You're a genius," Yaz interrupts wearily. "Yes, we've all got that now."

"Jolly good, well done you for paying attention." Tony briefly channels Jarvis, using the plummiest English accent he can muster, and then continues, "My point is, I want to know about anything that might give me an extra edge in the battles to come. Like you when you're policing – Carver Street, is it?"

"What?" Yaz frowns at him. "You were still in the armour when I talked about Carver Street."

"The armour still had power then, sweetheart. And I still had my hearing."

"So have I," Yaz shoots back, her voice spitting tintacks. "And if you don't want to call me Yaz, you can address me as Police Constable Khan. Got that?"

Tony holds up his hands in mock surrender. "My bad. Just being friendly."

"No, you're not. You're being a total muppet," Ryan tells him bluntly. "Use our proper names, yeah?"

"Okay," Tony says. He knows it's probably a bad idea to play poke the bear – given that the Doctor is his only way out of this – but he can't quite stop himself from adding, "Guess I need to put in some work on 'boundaries' and 'playing well with others'."

He does the air quotes. The roll of eyes he gets back from Yaz and Ryan indicates their lack of appreciation, while Graham merely looks exasperated. God, it feels just like old times. And it's beyond sad that he's actually enjoying that feeling.

"Tony, your suit's going to need recharging before it takes you back through the Rift," the Doctor tells him. Although her voice is perfectly neutral, Tony has more than a suspicion she's getting ready to unleash the stern Poppins again. "Why don't you and I sort that. And Yaz, Graham, Ryan – you all scoot off to the kitchen, pop the kettle on and make a brew."

"Good idea," Graham says. He gives Tony a discouraging frown before rounding up Yaz and Ryan with just his eyes. "We all need a break, and I could do with a cuppa."

Tony throws the Doctor an interrogative look as the room clears. "Kettle. Brew. Cuppa. Code names for tea. Am I right?"

"You're right." The Doctor fixes him with a stare. "Now, listen up, sunshine. No, don't say a word." She raises one finger.

Tony closes his mouth. Yep, she's definitely going for stern Poppins here.

"You've toned down the aggression, and that's lovely," the Doctor says, a steely glint in her eye. "But tell me, Tony, do you remember what I said about learning to do some things better or differently? Because, yes, you do need to put in some work on 'boundaries' and 'playing well with others' and you can make a good start on that by not winding my friends up. Because I like my friends. And I want to like you. But right now, you're not making it very easy. Have you got that?"

"Nix the air quotes. Got it."

Tony hears the Doctor sigh as he turns away and kneels down next to the suit to give it a quick inspection, but she chooses not to lecture him any further. She either thinks he's got the message or that he's a lost cause. 

"There's no obvious damage," Tony says a few moments later. "But I can't run diagnostics until the power's back up."

"I assume you've engineered it for extreme flight. Given that your journey here wasn't a straightforward one, maintaining suit integrity and life support must have drained the power almost completely."

"That's exactly what I was going to say. You know, this whole thing is incredible. Hey, give me some credit! I'm actually being serious here," Tony grumbles as the Doctor looks sceptical. "The vortex, space and time travel … I'm feeling a little out-gunned. A lot out-gunned. It's a new feeling. A little weird."

"A little threatening?"

"Not at all. A lot exhilarating. I could learn so much from you."

"Yes, you could," the Doctor agrees as she busies herself removing an exterior panel and pulling out a bundle of leads.

"But I'm not going to, am I?"

"No, you're not. Now, you can hook your suit up here. This is a universal cable charger."

"Your universe or mine?" Tony excuses this as a reflex response. She's an attractive woman and old habits die hard and all that.

The Doctor completely ignores his kneejerk attempt at flirting anyway. "Both of them. All of them. But hang on a tick." She stays his hand. "Before you do that, I need you to disable any weaponry your suit is carrying."

"No weapons installed yet. This is a prototype, not combat-ready." Not an outright lie, only a little eliding of the truth. "I shouldn't have needed it just yet, but the Mark 46 was … wrecked." That's the nice way of putting it, Tony thinks, with a mental flinch away from the memory of exactly how it had come to be wrecked.

"And you were wearing it at the time." The Doctor's voice turns unexpectedly gentle. "Yes, of course you were."

And just like that Tony's world tilts and throws him sideways into a whole world of memories he would much rather forget. His heart racing, he jerks his head up and stares at her. Is she reading his damn mind now? "How the hell did you –"

"That panic attack when I opened up your helmet? And the look in your eyes right now." The Doctor touches his shoulder, the gesture awkward but seeming well-intentioned. "Sorry, didn't mean to – "

"I thought I was going to die," Tony mutters and then, when the Doctor's eyes widen in genuine startlement, clarifies with, "The faceplate. It was hacked off. When you removed it, I flipped right back to that moment. The edge of his shield coming straight at me. He drove it into the arc reactor. Disabled it. But I thought … I thought he was going to bring it down on my face."

"He being your enemy?"

"He being my friend."

"Right." The Doctor frowns and then shakes her head. "No, no, I mean, _not_ right. Very much not right. You say he was your friend. What is he now?

"I don't know. We're not talking."

"Well, yes. I could see how that might be the case."

Tony doesn't answer. He needs a moment to gather himself together again, and he has no idea where this conversation is going, let alone if he wants to have anything more to do with it. But anything else might have been said is forestalled by Graham's cheerful voice announcing the return of the Sheffield Posse.

"Here you go, Doc. Brought you a cuppa."

"Thanks." She takes the mug of steaming brown liquid and wraps her hands around it. "I needed this."

"Didn't bring you one, Tony," Graham says in an impressive display of stating the obvious. "Wasn't sure how you felt about tea, being American. You like it iced, don't you? Or prefer coffee? But you can help yourself to what you want. The kitchen's through that door and there's all sorts in there."

"I'm good." Tony takes his time finishing connecting the Mark 47 to the console and uses it to clear his head of the whole Siberia disaster and remind himself about playing nicely with everybody. Then he gets to his feet.

They're all staring at him, clutching their mugs of tea, and Tony is sure the vile looking custard creams will make an appearance any minute now. He wonders if he should do something to distract them before they can think of it, but then the Doctor smiles at him. She has a good smile, he thinks, open and disarming.

"If I'm going to get you back home, Tony, it would help to know where you were before you arrived in our universe, what you were doing at the time and, oh, what you remember about how you got here."

Tony knows it's in his best interests to answer her questions and he does so readily. "I don't remember anything about how I got here because I wasn't conscious when it happened. The last thing I remember is being inside the suit and running checks on the energy shield."

"Where were you?"

"In the workshop with Vision."

"And who is Vision?"

"A non-murder bot I repurposed to stop the murder bot I accidentally created." Tony inwardly winces as the Doctor's smile disappears. He'd flipped out the response without any thought only to end up with this weird self-flagellating thing flying straight from his conscience. One that he knows damn well isn't going to endear him to anyone.

"You created a murder bot?" The Doctor isn't smiling now.

"Accidentally! I was trying to save the world at the time and I screwed up. Don't judge. We all make mistakes." Tony folds his arms, seeing no option now but to brazen it out.

"That's a really big mistake to make." Yaz is totally judging him and he can't blame her.

"Yes," says the Doctor. "It is." She gives him a hard stare and then redirects the conversation back to her original line of inquiry, choosing for the moment not to censure him any further. Tony is suitably grateful. "So right before whatever happened … happened, there were just the two of you in the workshop. And you weren't working on anything related to space/time travel?"

"No." Then Tony frowns. He starts to pace the TARDIS, trying to draw the sequence of events from his memory. "But Vision was doing something with the Mind Stone. That's a … gem in his forehead, like a third eye. He's still working out how it functions. It's not from Earth: it's one of the Infinity Stones. Don't ask." He waves a hand to stave off any possible questions. "Too complicated. Not relevant right now. The really important thing is that the stone is sentient and intelligent. So now I'm wondering if the stone tried to get me out of the way."

"So let me get this straight." Ryan has a gleam in his eye. "You think a magic stone wanted to get rid of you? Why doesn't that come as a complete shock?"

"Ryan!" the Doctor rebukes. "A little rude! We're all supposed to be playing nicely, remember?"

"Yep, rude." Tony comes to an abrupt halt and turns to stare at Ryan. Then he shrugs. "But ... probably fair."

"So, sentient jewellery." The Doctor considers this. She looks less than keen. "Me, I never trust anything that sparkles and has a mind of its own. You're thinking that this stone could've tapped into the Kyanicia Rift – which I'm guessing was close to your Earth at the time – and then it sent you through the portal? Would it be able to do that?"

"The Mind Stone's powerful. It can manipulate mind and matter. I think it could whammy me through a passing portal if it wanted to."

"Talking of which …" Yaz points at a monitor. "Doctor, you do realise that the Rift's gone?"

"No need to worry about that," the Doctor says, handing her now empty mug back to Graham.

"You think? Give me a reason not to." Tony has to trust the Doctor knows what she's doing, but that isn't going to stop him demanding answers. Especially when they concern the disappearance of his only way back home.

The Doctor has gone over to the weird console and is busy whisking around twisting dials, tapping switches and pulling levers in a rapid and apparently random fashion. Tony is finding her movements very hard to track: she looks more like a hyper-active child than a super-intelligent alien piloting a ship through space and time.

"The Kyanicia Rift never stays open for long," the Doctor informs him as she works. "But it's entirely predictable so calculating its next appearance is easy enough. Then I just need to back-track a route through it to the correct universe, the correct time and the correct place to return you. I say 'just', but it's going to take the TARDIS a little while to work the calculations. I've input what you've told me and I've got your energy signal, and the TARDIS can read the spatial-temporal particles in your suit so I have hold of the thread, and what I need to do is find the eye of the needle in the haystack of the Rift and poke you through it. In your suit of armour." She screws up her face. "This analogy's not really working out, is it?"

"Not really, no," Graham says as Tony gives a snort of amusement.

"Well, it's not easy explaining wormhole dynamics and trans-dimensional travel in layman's terms," the Doctor protests. "And yes, I'm including human genius engineers as laymen, Tony. Before you ask."

"So how long is all this going to take?" Yaz wants to know. Tony figures that she would prefer it to be sooner rather than later.

"A little bit. Some time. Quite a while," the Doctor prevaricates and then opts for honesty. "No idea. But we don't have to hang around here being bored. We can go somewhere and explore while we wait." She beams at Tony. "What do you say?"


	3. Don't Wander Off

"Is that a good idea?" Yaz gives the Doctor a sidelong glance, which Graham knows means that she doesn't think it is.

"It's a brilliant idea!" the Doctor corrects her. "We can give Tony a nice holiday before he goes back. What do you think, Tony?"

"A trip through time and space to an alien planet? I could be persuaded."

Tony might be happy to go along with the Doctor's suggestion but he's still paying a great deal of attention what the Doctor's doing at the console. Graham is almost sure he sees his fingers twitching as if he's desperate to get some hands-on experience himself. The Doctor, of course, isn't going to allow any such liberties, but fending him off is likely to become tedious. Graham begins to see the logic of taking a little stroll outside.

"Why not?" he says. "Got anywhere in mind, Doc?"

"Give me a moment." The Doctor stares down at the console with a thoughtful look on her face.

"So ... I'm familiar with shortcuts through space, Einstein-Rosen bridges and so on. But time travel? That's a new one on me." Tony steps a little closer to the console. "Are space-time machines like the TARDIS commonplace in your universe?"

"What? No. The TARDIS is unique," the Doctor tells him. Then she adds pensively, "At least she is right now …"

"There used to be more ships like her? How many other ways are there to navigate the space-time vortex? I now know about time rifts, but – "

"Time rifts, time winds, space-time anomalies in general," the Doctor interrupts, suddenly garrulous although Graham notices that she doesn't answer Tony's first question. "Also, some species have the innate ability to time travel. But if you're thinking technology, you have vortex manipulators, worn in a wrist band, like a watch. Pretty crude, though. Break easily. Then you've got your basic time scoop - you can get stuck in time at the other end with that, though, if you haven't left someone behind to bring you back. There are time corridors, of course, and rift manipulators ... " The Doctor checks herself. "Short answer. No, the TARDIS isn't the only way to time travel. But it's the best way. Not that I'm in any way biased."

"Right," Tony says, blinking. "What about – "

"A sports car," the Doctor interrupts again. "That's what the TARDIS is. A sportscar. And the vortex manipulator is like a … like a … a really rubbish car."

"A Robin Reliant?" Graham suggests. "You know, the ones with three wheels that roll over if you corner too fast."

"Yes!" the Doctor exclaims. "That's it, exactly! And who wants to travel in a Robin Reliant when you can travel in – "

"An Audi R8," Tony supplies. "Or Acura NSX, Bugatti Veyron SS, or – what?" He frowns at Ryan and Yaz's expressions. "It's only a list of sports cars."

"It's not only a list of sports cars." Ryan shakes his head. "It's a list of sports cars you own, isn't it?"

"Own, owned." Tony shrugged as if it didn't matter either way, which it probably didn't to a billionaire.

"Ah! Got it!" the Doctor calls out. "I'll take us to Marras. There are a few small self-sufficient cities on the main continent, away from the polar regions, and the planet's run by a peaceful technocratic Federation. Mostly peaceful," she qualifies, throwing herself into setting up their destination as well as continuing to talk nineteen to the dozen. "Peaceful at the time I've chosen when they're in the middle of their Golden Age. Humans were the first settlers, but a lot of other alien species followed on and the cities are a pretty eclectic mix from many worlds and cultures so you never quite know who you'll see next. I'm going to land us at Kimboray, between the Boray Mountains and the Great Lake, which is actually so big it's an inland sea. I'll avoid storm season – quite a few of those systems turn cyclonic, which puts a bit of a dampener on the beach picnic. Hope you all like seafood, though I'm sure there'll be a veggie option if we ask nicely. And – here we are! I've landed us by the waterfront."

"Sounds good to me." Graham is envisaging an alien version of the Italian Lakes, somewhere he can take it easy and people-watch while sipping a tasty local beer. It will be a nice change of pace from the usual.

The Doctor spins around to face Tony. "I assume this is your first alien planet, so let me tell you the rules. Basically, it's try not to break anything. Oh, and don't wander off. That's a good one! I always used to say that. Well, come on, then!"

The Doctor leads the way, Yaz and Ryan close behind. Graham waits for Tony to follow them before he brings up the rear, noting as he does so that they've arrived in an empty alley between two derelict looking buildings. Yaz, Ryan and the Doctor move off towards the alley entrance. Graham stands and watches as Tony ignores his surroundings in favour of walking all the way around the outside of the TARDIS. This no doubt takes him a much shorter time than he'd anticipated.

"The interior of the TARDIS exists in a different dimension to the exterior," he declares with a confidence verging on smugness.

"Of course it does." Graham resists the temptation to roll his eyes but goes for a tone that suggests he thinks Tony's pointing out the bleeding obvious. "You don't need to –"

"What are you two doing?" Ryan calls over to them. "Get over here! You need to see this now."

Graham gives the TARDIS door a firm tug, making sure it's closed properly. He and Tony take a matter of seconds to join the others at the end of the alley and get their first proper look at the city of Kimboray. But the sight that presents itself isn't exactly as the Doctor described it or how Graham had imagined it. In fact, it's nothing like it at all.

"Ah," Graham says, packing quite a lot of meaning into a short interjection.

"Again, what was that whole spiel you had about not breaking anything?" Tony cocks his head at the Doctor and lifts his eyebrows. "Because – "

"It looks like someone else got here first," Ryan finishes.

Every building they can see is missing a roof. Some of the smaller buildings droop like melted candles, their structural integrity failing, and a few have collapsed in a tumble of masonry. Black openings gape in walls where windows have gone and there are empty spaces where the doors are missing. There's not a living thing in sight.

Graham stares out across the lake. The sky is the sickly colour of bleached coral and as far as he can see, the water stretches out, grey and empty, with barely a shadow of movement. All around is a deathly silence and the warm air clings to them like a shroud.

"This is not right," the Doctor mutters. She's scanning their surroundings with the sonic. "It's not supposed to be like this."

"Yep. Got that," Tony says.

"Unless … " The Doctor adjusts the sonic, checking the readings again. "Thought so. We're not in the Golden Age at all. We've overshot that period by some time. But I'm not sure why."

"Is it because your TARDIS is on the fritz? Is it acting more Robin Reliant than Audi R8?" Tony grimaces. "God, I hope not."

"The TARDIS doesn't always take me where I want to go," the Doctor tells him with a note of reproof. "But she always takes me where I need to go."

"So why do we need to be here?" Yaz looks around, perplexed. "It doesn't seem like there's much left. Have you picked up anything, Doctor?"

"I thought I caught a trace of something orbiting the planet a moment ago, but I've lost it now. It could've been a stray satellite, the last of their network after whatever disaster caused this. Other than that, I've got nothing. So, best we head out and see what we can find."

"Really?" Tony asks, surprised. "You can't just reset the destination and land us where we're supposed to be?"

"Didn't you hear what the Doctor said?" Ryan is impatient. "This _is_ where we're supposed to be."

"You don't have to come with us," Graham tells Tony. "You can go back to the TARDIS if you want. And I'll go with you." He gives the Doctor a brief nod indicating he has this covered. He doesn't think Tony could do any harm, but there's no point in taking chances. Leaving him on his own in the TARDIS isn't going to happen, not when the man is a self-professed genius with previous form for creating a killer robot.

"No," Tony says after a moment's reflection. "I'll stay. I want to find out why the TARDIS thinks you need to be here."

"So you're curious, are you?" The Doctor smiles. "Excellent! Come on, then!"

"Is it safe?" Graham watches as Tony, having made up his mind he's up for some exploration, moves off and starts picking his way through the rubble littering the waterfront.

"The sonic didn't show up anything hostile to human life," the Doctor tells him. "Just keep an eye on the most unstable looking buildings."

"Which is all of them," Ryan says. "My plan is to let the genius billionaire go first."

"He seems to be on board with that." Yaz watches Tony's progress with resigned amusement.

"He wasn't joking about not being much of a team player," Graham observes. "But I suppose we still need to watch out for him. Not much point in the Doc's rescue effort if we let him get buried under a ton of rubble."

"Thanks, Graham," says the Doctor cheerfully. "Always nice to be appreciated. And yes, Tony's a volatile egotist with a saviour complex the size of a small planet, but his panic attack was real enough. So we really do need to keep an eye on him."

They catch up with Tony and head off along what would have been the busy main street fronting the lake, maybe even the promenade itself. It certainly isn't pleasant to stroll along the prom right now, Graham thinks, and if anyone ever sold the alien equivalent of ice cream and kiss me quick hats here then no trace of them exists any more.

Everywhere is silent. There's no detectable breeze, no sound of birds or insects, let alone people or vehicles. Apart from the faint slap of lake water as it moves against the rocky shore, the only noise comes from their own movements and the brief buzz as the Doctor uses her sonic to scan each building as they pass.

The atmosphere is both oppressive and unpleasant. As if by unspoken agreement, no-one says a word until they reach a junction where the main road makes a right hand turn away from the lake. Then the Doctor, who has overtaken Tony to regain her position at the front of their advance, stops and whirls to face them.

"Right," she says briskly. "First impressions, everyone."

"I know I'm stating the obvious here," Graham answers her first. "But this place is deader than a wet weekend in Blackpool."

Yaz nods in agreement. "It looks like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb."

"There are no radiation traces," the Doctor tells her, whisking the sonic around in all directions. "And the destruction would be much more substantial."

"A bombing run or an airstrike of some sort, then?" Ryan adds his two pennyworth to the brainstorming session.

"See the remaining walls?" Tony points upwards. "These buildings weren't destroyed in a bombing raid. They were whittled away a piece at a time, from the top down."

Yaz turns to look where he's indicating. "Seems almost like they've been … nibbled away."

"So damage caused by flying giant mice, then?" Ryan says.

"Flying giant _alien_ mice," Tony amends in similar deadpan fashion. "Obviously."

"Or perhaps chemical weapons?" Graham ventures a more plausible explanation.

"Chemical or biological weapons might explain why there's nothing organic left." Tony turns to the Doctor. "Your turn, Doctor Scully."

"Doctor Scully?" Yaz repeats, sounding unimpressed. "Is that supposed to be a cutesy nickname or something?"

"Female doctor who investigates weird stuff? Not my best. Not my worst, either." Tony shrugs. "Or don't you have 'X-Files' on your Earth?"

"We do. And Scully has red hair," Graham points out.

"And what happened to using our proper names?" Ryan asks, exasperated. "I thought we'd – "

"Ginger!" the Doctor exclaims and, when everyone turns to stare at her, she looks wistful. "I always wanted to be ginger. Maybe next time."

"Or, you know, dye job," Tony suggests. "And what do you mean by 'next time'?"

The Doctor skips over that. "It's just 'Doctor', Tony. No need to gild the lily, as it were. Now, back to business. I'm taking flying giant alien mice off the table, sorry Ryan. And I can't find any traces of chemical or biological attack. Which doesn't rule it out, of course. The evidence could have dissipated. Ah! There's a flicker of something interesting this way. I'm picking up an anomaly. It's not organic. Not sure what it is. Let's go find out."

She leads the way down the right-hand turn, away from the lakeside, and Tony matches his pace with hers. Graham follows on, reflecting that Tony seems to be losing some of his defensive spikiness. His words are no longer quite so edged or provocative and he's thankfully dropped the fake charm offensive. That last conversation had been verging on friendly banter.

Graham is joined by Yaz and Ryan. He finds this street much more claustrophobic with ruined buildings stretching away on either side of it. The Doctor is occupied in swinging the sonic from side to side, trying to relocate the faint signal. Everyone else has to make do with their human senses and, as it turns out, all of them are equally blindsided by the threat from above.

A rumble overhead is their first clue. A sprinkle of dust is their next and last. Things happen pretty fast after that. Everyone's attention flies upwards to the building immediately on their right, and they're already moving when a section of wall collapses.

There's an almighty crash as stone meets the street and shatters. Then there's an awful lot of dust. Graham takes his hands off his head and coughs, clearing his throat and blinking through the tiny particles floating through the air. He's crouched alongside Yaz and Ryan and the three of them look to have escaped unscathed. But he can't see –

"Doctor!" Ryan yells.

"I'm okay!" she calls back, emerging from the dust in front of them, Tony at her side. "We're both okay."

The pair of them are dusty and there's a long streak of dirt up the front of the Doctor's blue coat and more on her elbows but, other than that, neither of them seem the worse for wear.

"If we were just a few steps further along, we'd have been under all that," Yaz says. She sounds as shaken as Graham feels when he sees the scale of the freshly fallen rubble in front of them. Ryan lets out a long breath as if he can't quite believe their lucky escape.

"I nearly was," the Doctor says. "Tony has very quick reactions." She gives him a warm smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." He threads his hands through his hair, combing out some of the dust, and then winces and looks down at his right hand.

"You're hurt," Graham says as he sees blood dripping through Tony's fingers. "Is it your head?"

"No. Took a cut to my hand." Tony shrugs it off. "It's nothing."

"Let's push on, then, only with extreme caution this time," the Doctor says. "Tony, keep scanning the buildings for any more signs of impending collapse. Everyone else, stay close and let's find that anomaly."

It takes a lot less time to do that than Graham thought it would. Only a few yards beyond the newly-formed debris field, Yaz stops and points to the left.

"What's that? Doctor, scan it with your sonic again. Now look!"

Graham squints at the particular ruin Yaz is indicating and realises she's onto something. There's a faint fuzz around it as if it's slightly out of focus.

"Brilliant, Yaz! I see it now." The Doctor adjusts the sonic's controls. "It's a perception filter. And it looks like it's starting to fail. I just need to – yes!"

It's as if a veil has been lifted. A whole new structure suddenly appears in front of them, and it doesn't look at all like Graham was expecting.

The building towers above the stunted remains of those surrounding it, a gothic confection of a castle incongruously re-imagined on an alien planet. Made of white stone, the octagonal structure has three tiers, each adorned with decorative pinnacles. The mullioned windows nearest ground level are arched and enormous and when Graham squints up, he sees that the same pattern is repeated, with the windows at higher levels decreasing in size along with each tier. Surrounding the windows are numerous columns and cornices and other architectural devices, all embellished with a great quantity of decorative tracery.

"You know, I'm sure Jim at the garage had a wedding cake like this," Graham says after a moment. "I think this might be a little bit bigger, though."

"It's like a gothic space rocket." Ryan looks bemused. "Why is that even a thing?"

"Or Sleeping Beauty's castle," Yaz offers.

"Please let there be a sleeping princess," Tony says, apparently beseeching the world in general. "If we find one, I volunteer to wake her up."

"You know she'd only wake up for true love's kiss," Yaz tells him. "So unless your true love is up in this castle, assuming you have one, that's not going to happen."

Before Tony can frame a response to that, the Doctor steps in with a brisk, "It's romantic gothic architecture. Remember I said humans settled here first? This must be a retro take on a style from Earth's past. And we won't know anything else until we actually get inside, will we? So what are you lot waiting for? Come on!"

They don't get very far. Before they even reach the steps leading up to the doorway – an over-the-top affair, surrounded by flanking buttresses curving up to a pointed arch – they walk right into an invisible barrier.

It doesn't hurt. Graham decides it's more like walking into a curtain of rubber than it is hitting a brick wall, but it's just as impenetrable. It shimmers long enough for them to see that it's enclosing the entirety of the castle. Then it vanishes from view.

"Force field. Wasn't expecting that," the Doctor mutters, chagrined. "I'll need to adjust the – hang on a minute! What's that?"

Following her gaze, Graham sees that the Doctor's attention has been caught by the sudden change in the colour of the sky. Or, more accurately, the colour of the cloud that's spreading across it in a malignant bruise. That is if bruises were scarlet and … _glowing_.

"Shit!" Tony sums up what Graham's thinking. "Is that blood rain? Are we in the end of days here?"

"I don't know," the Doctor says, her expression turning increasingly worried as she takes the readings. "It's not blood, but it is rain, sort of. But it's absolutely chocka with, amongst other things, oxidants, iron oxides, perchlorates and UV irradiation.”

"Well, now we know what happened to the city," Graham says. He's not entirely certain what all of those things are, but he's pretty sure none of them are good news.

"That's one hell of a toxic cocktail." Tony's face registers genuine alarm. "We need to get back to the TARDIS. Now."

"We don't have enough time, not the speed that cloud's moving," the Doctor says grimly. "So we really need to find a way into the castle."

"And the TARDIS? Will she be okay?" Tony sounds understandably concerned.

"She'll be fine." The Doctor has her head down, her fingers flying across the sonic screwdriver's settings. "But we won't."

"Can't you summon the TARDIS to us?" Tony questions.

"I've tried that," the Doctor tells him shortly. "But my signal's jammed. The force field? The toxic rain? Maybe both. Don't know, so stop talking to me, I need to concentrate."

"Can we shelter in some of the wrecked buildings?" Yaz suggests to the others. "Try to find some cover?"

Tony shakes his head. "No point. The chemicals will turn the entire atmosphere toxic. The inhabitants of this place either got out fast. Or they died."

"I'm starting to think I'd have preferred giant flying alien mice to toxic rain." Ryan sighs.

"Yeah, me too, kid." Tony claps him on the shoulder in a show of solidarity.

"Kid? Really?" Ryan shakes his head. "Okay, I'll allow that seeing as it's coming from an old man."

The Doctor gives a growl of frustration, stopping a potential round of sniping dead in its tracks.

"Doctor?" Yaz asks. "No luck breaking the force field?"

"I don't want to break it. Just lower it long enough for us to get inside. If it's not there at all, we lose the protection it would give from the toxic rain. But it keeps switching frequency every time I get anywhere near – ah! Whoever made this is really, really clever. I'm not saying I can't crack it. I can. But not in the time available." The Doctor glances at the sky again. "So Plan B it is, then."

"Which is?" Tony demands.

"Use the sonic to generate our own force field and hope it holds until the rain passes or we can get back to the TARDIS." The Doctor redirects her efforts, taking further readings from the oncoming cloud.

"But there must be a way through here!" Ryan shoves fruitlessly at the force field. It fizzes under his hands but remains obdurately in place. "Otherwise how did the people living here get in?"

"A key? A code?" Yaz suggests. "Something like that?"

"This is starting to feel like we're trying to break into Moria and we haven't got the magic word." Graham looks up at the castle. "You know, 'Lord of the Rings'."

"Yep," says Tony. "What is it? 'Speak friend and enter'," he intones mockingly, moving to push his palms flat against the implacable barrier of the force field.

Which, with a brief burst of iridescence, opens under his hands and sends Tony staggering through it before closing up behind him.


	4. A Sense Of Something Long Dead

Following the initial shock of stumbling through the force field, Tony's first concern is regaining his balance and not falling flat on his face on the steps of the castle. Then he swings back to the force field to see Graham, Yaz and Ryan all staring at him through it and shouting. He can't hear a thing, but he has a damn good idea what they're saying.

He puts his hands up to the force field and pushes. When it opens up under his touch, he follows through with his head and shoulders before stopping with the rest of his body still on the safe side. This has no effect beyond creating a slight tickling sensation.

"Hey," he says, unable to prevent a little smugness creeping into his voice. "How are you all doing back there?"

"Not great," the Doctor tells him frankly, lifting her eyes briefly away from the sonic screwdriver. "And we're running out of time."

"How did you do that?" Ryan demands, shifting impatiently from one foot to another. "Because we tried the words and it didn't work for us."

"Really not important right now, Ryan." The Doctor clearly has other things on her mind. Like the prospect of imminent death, Tony imagines. "We don't need to know how Tony did it; all we need to know if his ability extends to bringing us through as well. And how quickly he can do it. Just so you know, I'm recommending as quickly as possible."

"Yaz, give me your hand." Tony reaches out to her.

Her survival instinct is healthy and she doesn't argue. Tony takes a firm hold and pulls her safely through the barrier with a few sparkles and the minimum of fuss. He doesn't waste any time before repeating the same manoeuvre with Ryan. Then, with a quick glance at what he's mentally dubbed the Red Cloud of Death, he reaches out with both hands and draws Graham and the Doctor to safety simultaneously. This creates extra sparkles but otherwise, there's no change to the force field. It remains intact.

This is just as well because a few seconds later the red rain strikes it with such silent fury that the world they've just left turns blood-red.

Tony can't stop an instinctive flinch and nor can the others, he notices. They all stare at each other in relief and Tony thinks the scarlet glow beyond makes it look as if they're trapped in a silent movie gore-fest. The Doctor is the only one regarding the red rain without so much as a twitch. He assumes the time she's spent studying it, along with the force field's composition, has given her complete faith that they're safe inside the protected zone.

"Okay," Ryan says, regaining his equilibrium pretty fast. "So now can Tony tell us how he got through the force field?"

"No idea," Tony admits as the Doctor takes a step closer to him.

"May I?" she says, indicating his hands.

Tony isn't sure what she's asking, but he nods anyway. She turns his hands palm upwards. Tony looks down and then jerks his right hand away from her, bringing it up to his face and staring at it in horror.

"What the hell is that?" Tony's voice comes out rather more high-pitched than he would've liked, but maintaining a stoic image isn't high on his agenda given that the cut on the palm of his hand is now glowing an eerie silvery-white.

"Wait a sec." The Doctor has the ubiquitous sonic screwdriver out ready to analyse the shit out of whatever it is, only there's no noise as she starts scanning. She frowns and shakes it.

"What? It's not working? Your magical all-purpose Hogwarts wand chooses _now_ to stop working?"

"Something in the castle is stopping it from working," the Doctor corrects him. She stares down at the sonic screwdriver for a moment and then sighs and drops it into her coat pocket. "The sonic isn't dead or drained, Tony. It's not being allowed to function. Take it from me, this place only looks like a gothic relic: there has to be some pretty serious technology hidden behind that fancy facade. And I'm not just talking about the way the sonic is being blocked. Remember, whatever's in there has also been able to keep the force field intact against an atmospheric disturbance which destroyed a city. And, in all likelihood, an entire planet."

"And does this pretty serious technology have anything to do with what's happened to my hand and how I got past the force field?" Tony demands. Stupid question, he berates himself. Of course it does.

"Oh, most definitely," the Doctor says, sounding unreasonably chipper all things considered. "Let me take another look."

Tony holds out his hand again. He isn't exactly sure what she can do, but he's a long way from home, there's no FRIDAY to run an analysis and his own tech is out of reach. Whether he likes it or not, she's the only support system he has. With or without her currently defunct sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor carefully presses the skin around the weird-looking wound and then touches the tip of her finger onto the silvery-white centre. "Can you feel that?" she asks.

"No. The actual glowy part is numb. Is that good? Or bad?"

"It's good that it doesn't hurt," the Doctor says firmly, and also evasively, Tony notes. "And I have a working theory about what it is, too. Let me test something out. Yaz, Ryan. See if you can open the doors to the castle. I'm getting bored hanging around on the doorstep, aren't you?"

"Well, the view's nothing to write home about." Graham gives the red world beyond the force field a hard stare of disapproval.

Ryan jumps up the steps, takes firm hold of the metal handle on one of the two doors and pulls. But the door refuses to shift and when Yaz tries the other one, her efforts produce no better result than Ryan's.

"Both doors are locked," she says, looking back at the Doctor. "Now what?"

"Of course they are." The Doctor doesn't sound at all surprised. "Tony, it's your turn."

Tony looks at the doors, at the Doctor and then at his glitzy glow hand. He makes the obvious connection and uses said hand. He only needs to place it on one of the handles for both doors to open inwards in a clear invitation.

"Whoah!" Ryan actually sounds impressed. "You have a magic hand now."

"Yes, and it's a little bit creepy." Yaz has her own spin on it, and it isn't one that Tony altogether disagrees with.

"Welcome to my castle," he declaims as he waves the four of them inside. "Please wipe your feet before entering."

The lighting comes on automatically as soon as the Sheffield Posse cross the threshold, casting a warm, bright glow to their surroundings. It reveals a hall that's mostly a white stone expanse with dimensions suggesting it runs from the front of the castle right to the back. There's an impressively outsized staircase in the centre of the room, winding its way around a massive square column and then disappearing up through the high-vaulted ceiling. Tony admires the scale of it, even if the intricate patterns on the black and white tiled floor are too fussy for his tastes. He steps inside.

There's a bright flash.

The castle shudders.

And his vision … _kaleidoscopes_.

Images loop and fragment in a dizzying sequence. Familiar, immediate images like the Doctor, Yaz, Graham, Ryan merge with the floor patterns, the stairs, the over-ornamented ceiling. And unfamiliar visions and sounds and sensations crash into those like shrieking banshees. Scarlet rain, white figures, feathers against his face, terrible pain, huge unblinking eyes the colour of indigo, blinding light, a smell of decay and death, screaming.

A lot of screaming.

"_Tony_!"

The screaming stops.

There seems to be silver light sparking behind Tony's eyes and he's only able to open them with an effort. He finds himself staring down at the floor. It's considerably closer than it was a few moments ago but at least he's managed to collapse with a modicum of control, going down sideways rather than smacking headfirst into the tiles.

"Tony?" The Doctor's voice sounds very close. That's because she's kneeling down behind him and has one arm under his shoulder as if she's supporting him. Maybe she needs to at that because when he tries to lift his head he can't manage it. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

Tony swallows and clears his throat. "Yeah. Just a little groggy." Which is an understatement. He actually feels more like he's been hit in the head by a truck.

"That's a relief. You had us all worried." Graham's voice. Tony manages to turn his head and see him standing close enough to help if needed.

"Can you get up?" the Doctor asks.

"Not right now," Tony admits, and then wonders if he's really been shrieking like a banshee in front of the British. And the alien. "Was that me? All the … screaming?"

"It was," the Doctor confirms. "Can you tell us what happened?"

Apparently, yes, he has. How disappointing, Tony thinks, a little wildly. But in his own defence, he'd seen things, no, scrap that, he'd experienced things, and those things were a horrible jumble of highly disturbing images wrapped around in full Sensorama that no words could do justice to. But he knows he'll have to find a few because an explanation of some sort is clearly needed here.

"I had visions," Tony says eventually, and also reluctantly.

"Ah! That's interesting," the Doctor says. "What did you see?"

Interesting was one way of putting it, but it wasn't the word Tony would have chosen; 'disturbing' summed it up a whole lot better. "Just glimpses. Hallucinations. Red rain, indigo eyes, white shapes. Had a sense of something long dead. Feathers. Screaming. Not just mine. Someone or something else in pain."

Once spoken aloud, the experience takes on an even more unsettling aspect. Dead things and pain. Never a good combination.

"The whole place shook, right to the foundations." Ryan's tone wavers uneasily between awe and anxiety. "I thought it was an earthquake at first."

"I saw a flash of light right before the shaking." Yaz crouches in front of Tony. He succeeds in lifting his head up enough to see the concern in her eyes. "I think it came from your hand."

"The whole place lit up like a Roman Candle," Graham says soberly. "Including you."

"Wow." Tony tries very hard to put that striking, and also terrifying, image out of his mind and goes instead for knee-jerk flippancy. "Just so you know, next time I put on a light and sound display there'll be an entrance fee."

"Hope you give us mates' rates, then." Ryan doesn't waste any time coming back at him; he's clearly over his initial shock.

"I don't think it'll happen again," the Doctor says with a considerable degree of certainty.

"You going to give me any kind of explanation sometime soon? Because that would be good." Tony grimaces. "Ten bucks says it's something to do with my glitzy glow hand."

"It certainly is," the Doctor confirms. "A neural link was initiated when your injured hand came into contact with the force field. But it seems that link wasn't actually complete until you stepped out onto the floor. Which I didn't expect."

"Came as something of a sucker-punch for me too," Tony tells her with great feeling. "So any bright ideas on exactly what the hell I'm linked to, then? The Matrix?"

"You're linked to whatever controls the castle, and my best guess is that's a highly advanced computer network," the Doctor says. "It's also probable that a biological life form coded the entry protocols to respond to living organisms given that your blood acted as a catalyst to enable the initial connection. Which, I've got to say, is a really, really weird way to allow someone entry into your property. Unless – "

"Unless the entry was designed to be touch activated and it's malfunctioning," Tony completes the sentence for her and tries not to think too hard about the implications of what he's saying. Discovering that he's blood brothers with a computer that's in control of a freaking castle is screwed up enough and now there's the added bonus of the whole system itself being impaired in some way. "The perception filter was also glitching, so my guess is the whole system's compromised to some extent."

"That's a good guess." The Doctor pats his shoulder, which Tony takes as a slightly inept gesture of approval. "And it's my guess, too. The question now, is to what extent?" 

"And also do we have any way of knowing if this computer network is benevolent?" Graham wonders out loud.

"So far it's let Tony through the force field and into the castle. And it's allowed us inside, too," Yaz answers him. "I think that sounds pretty benevolent."

"But none of you got the visions," Tony points out. "I didn't go on a screaming jag for no reason. Trust me when I say that unwelcome little interlude didn't leave me with any warm and fuzzy feelings."

"What kind of feelings did you get, then?" Yaz asks him. "Other than unpleasant ones, I mean."

Tony considers this a moment. "Honestly? It felt like I was getting a breakneck mystery tour of someone else's worst nightmares. Or maybe their memories. And I don't like mysteries. Not when they involve me. Even less when they actually revolve _around _me. Like now. We don't even have any guarantees this so-called benevolent state of affairs is going to continue, do we?"

"Not right now we don't," the Doctor admits, although the gleam in her eyes suggests she's finding their situation more than a little exhilarating. 

Tony doesn't share her enthusiasm. His head aches and he's starting to feel a more than a little untethered by recent revelations. Like he's standing on a precipice with a howling gale right behind him and he's only one false step away from toppling over the edge. "I've got to tell you, this is not the way I saw my vacation going."

"Me neither," the Doctor says, this time sounding more rueful as if she's suddenly registered that Tony has good reason to be far from happy about the turn of events. "But I'm starting to get a glimpse of a much bigger picture. For instance, those visions of yours. I'm wondering if they were meant to hold some sort of message, which could mean that the network linked to you for reasons of its own and saving our lives was just a happy by-product. But right now, we've got more questions than answers, more jigsaw than picture, and we don't have enough of the pieces to see it properly."

"We'd better get collecting some of those pieces, then." Ryan stares around the hall. "Doctor, I get that the force field is preserving the castle from the toxic rain, but how come in here it's warm and clean and has its own lighting? Is the network responsible for that as well?"

The Doctor nods. "This is just a far more sophisticated and self-sustaining version of the automated buildings that are already being designed on Earth."

"How long has this place been here?" Graham asks. "If the network is starting to break down, it could've been a very long time. And what's it all here for, anyway? Why is this building being protected and none of the others? Tony, did you pick anything about that while you were, er – "

"Being driven into screaming madness by eldritch visions?" Tony finishes for him, taking a step back from the cliff edge and making a sharp swerve into self-mockery. He makes an effort to follow it up with something that will make him sound a little less unhinged. "That would be no. I've got zilch on this. No confidential information coming in via the castle matrix either. If I had to guess, I'd go for it being here to protect something. Something important enough to require an elaborate shield."

"That's a reasonable theory," the Doctor agrees. "And one to keep in mind for later. But right now I think we've asked enough questions. Ryan's right. We need to collect some more pieces of the jigsaw so it's time we went on an answer hunt." She looks down at Tony. "Are you fit to move now?"

Tony is able to get to his feet with a hand from Ryan. He finds that the residual dizziness has mostly passed although the headache persists and there's a dull ache right down to his bones which really complements the whole insomnia thing he already has going on. No wonder he's starting to feel unglued.

The Doctor stands up next to him and then spins around in a slow circle, studying all the exits: four huge wood-panelled doors with nothing to suggest where they lead to.

"Right. Let's do this one door at a time," she says. "And we'll take turns at opening them so we can make sure Tony isn't the only one who can do that."

"With his magic hand," adds Ryan.

"Yes." Tony flourishes his glitzy glow hand, mustering up considerably more bravado than he actually feels. "Don't you wish you had one, too?"

"Nah, I'm good." Ryan folds his arms. "You can keep it, mate."

The Doctor crosses to the door on the near left which she opens easily, pushing it wide so they can see inside. "Ah! A drawing-room."

"With seating for a small conference and a lovely view of the deadly red rain," says Yaz. "Nice."

"Comfy-looking seats," Graham observes. "Bit on the large side, though. Maybe the castle was built on a huge scale for a reason. Big aliens?"

"Big aliens with a taste for rich colours and heritage prints in an English country house style?" Tony contributes, making a sterling effort to throw off his lingering malaise and show some interest. The décor's definitely not his style and it's definitely not what he would expect to find on an alien planet. "That … would not actually be the weirdest thing I've come across today."

"Shall I try door number two?" Graham asks after a moment or two. "See if that's got anything more informative behind it?"

"Good idea. Lead on," the Doctor says. They move across to the door opposite, which Graham is able to open without any difficulty, and find themselves staring at a space Tony judges as less a room and more of a furniture warehouse. A furniture warehouse with an excess of furniture at that, because the enormous space is jam-packed from floor to ceiling with a huge amount and variety of household fixtures and fittings of an antique appearance.

"Looks like we're still stuck with the Downton Abbey theme," Graham says as he takes in the scale and nature of the furniture collection. "But only if everything in Downton Abbey is super-sized and its entire contents have been stuffed into one room. So were the residents about to leave? Or had they just moved in and not got around to arranging everything where it should be?"

"It's all jumbled up," Ryan observes with a frown. "It's more like the stuff was just dumped here in a hurry."

He's right, Tony thinks. There's no order in the grouping and stacking of the goods and chattels. It really does look like the only plan was to cram as much as possible into the room in the shortest amount of time. He reaches out with his right hand, running it across the upturned leg of a cabinet to see if it sparks off any reaction. It doesn't.

"The mystery deepens," says the Doctor, sounding positively energised now. "Sorry Tony, but I love a good mystery. Come on! Let's check the next room."

"I'll do door number three," Ryan offers, heading for the hall.

Tony lingers a little longer after the others have taken a last look around and gone after Ryan. Partly because in spite of his best attempts to push through it, he's still feeling wiped out and wants a moment longer to try and compose himself, and partly so he can maybe pick up some helpful vibes. He strokes his hand across a chair, feeling like a crappy ghost hunter as he tries – and fails – to get a psychic reading, and then he hears Ryan call out.

"Doctor! There's someone here! Oi! Who are you?"

Tony manages to move fast enough to catch up with Graham, the Doctor and Yaz as they respond to Ryan's shout. They find him behind the staircase in the centre of the hall, staring around in some confusion.

"Where did it go?" Ryan turns in a circle, his expression frustrated,

"What happened?" the Doctor demands. "What did you see?"

"I was heading over to open the third door when I saw something or someone over here." Ryan indicates the back of the staircase block. "I didn't get a proper look, but it was like a pale shadow. And it just … vanished."

Tony looks over and sees exactly zero. Whatever was here is no longer in the vicinity, that much is obvious. He's starting to feel wiped out again after his sudden burst of exertion, so he leans up against the stone column and watches everyone's search efforts in silence.

"There's nothing here now." The Doctor begins pacing around the hall, considering the possibilities. "Could anything have got past you to the other doors?"

"The only door not in my sightline was the one you all came out of. You couldn't have missed seeing it."

"Could it have gone up the stairs?" Yaz asks.

"I'd have seen it," Ryan says with certainty. That's true, Tony thinks, given that it's an open staircase with no handrail. "I literally blinked and the shadow was gone."

"A ghost?" Yaz suggests. Tony registers the doubt in her voice: presumably, she figures their bright-lit surroundings don't exactly lend themselves to a haunting. Although given everything that's happened so far, he wouldn't be too quick to rule it out.

"It could be a temporal displacement or teleportation," the Doctor speculates. "A pale shadow suggests it could be an incomplete manifestation. Of … something."

"Tony? You sensing anything with your, er, connections?" Graham asks him.

"Me?" Tony shakes off enough fatigue to answer him. "I got nothing. Maybe we're all tired. Seeing things that aren't there."

"Maybe." Ryan doesn't look convinced.

"I don't know about tired, but I'm hungry." Graham sighs as the Doctor continues to poke around the staircase. "I could kick myself for not packing a sandwich."

"We don't know how long we're going to be stuck here, so we could look for a kitchen," Yaz suggests. "And hope there's something in it we can eat and drink,"

"And a bathroom," Graham adds. "Just in case."

"Okay." Tony is struggling to summon up much enthusiasm in this mundane conversation. "Sure. You all do your thing. I'm going back to the drawing-room to test out the seating."

The Doctor lifts her head up and shoots him a look of concern. "Are you all right?"

"Not really. Being zapped by a floor really wipes out the energy levels. Apparently. Who knew?"

"Okay." The Doctor nods. "You go take a rest, then. We'll stick to this level for now and if we find anything important, we'll wake you. Do you need a hand?"

"I'm fine." Tony exits stage left, leaving them to their investigations.


	5. Shotgun Therapy

Ryan watches Tony leave. "He's not acting like his usual bolshy self, is he?"

"I think he's tired," Yaz says. "I mean, he was zapped pretty hard when he got linked to the network."

"That would've been enough to knock the stuffing out of anyone," Graham agrees. The completion of the neural link was obviously a debilitating experience, and a pretty distressing one into the bargain, although Graham's not sure how much of Tony's reaction was down to pain or to the terrible visions delivered along with the connection.

"Yes." The Doctor has a tiny frown between her eyes. "That's true enough. Well, let's see how he is when he's had a bit of a lie-down. Now, who's up for trying the rest of the doors?"

Yaz does the honours with door three and reveals a corridor that leads to a large room containing numerous gleaming white units, many of them stretching from floor to ceiling. It looks almost aggressively modern in comparison to the rest of the castle.

"This must be the kitchen." Ryan searches for a way to access the units; they're devoid of any useful handles or knobs.

"Looks like it," Graham says. "But, going on what we've seen so far, I was expecting a kitchen that looked more like an illustration from Mrs Beeton's cookery book."

Yaz finds that the units open when they're tapped. Then they discover that the doors conceal both appliances and cupboards, but it still takes quite a bit of hunting around before they uncover anything resembling food and drink. They pile their spoils on one of the flat surfaces.

"Are you sure this is edible?" Ryan pokes at a packet of biscuit-like things, his expression doubtful.

"Oh yes. Hardtack. Seen these loads of times. They're often used on deep space expeditions or rescue missions. One biscuit a day contains all the nutrients you need for good health and they last for centuries. What's not to like?" The Doctor studies the small flat packet and sighs. "Well, all right, I'll admit they're not exactly the fabled waybread of the Elves. In fact, they're completely bland and boring. But on the plus side, they will keep you alive pretty much indefinitely."

"I hope we don't have to put that to the test." Yaz pulls a face. "What about this liquid?"

"Bottled water with added preservative for longevity. I recognise the label." The Doctor tosses a bottle idly from hand to hand. "Takes me back a bit, seeing this. Once drank a bottle that was over seven hundred years old. Shared it with Marie Curie because she was the one who actually found it in a – "

She cuts her sentence short as the floor under their feet suddenly lurches. The walls start to tremble.

"Now what's happening?" Yaz flings the Doctor a look of alarm.

"Come on!" The Doctor sets off at a run through the doorway and down the corridor back to the entrance hall. "Remember the last time this happened?" she throws back over her shoulder as she heads for the open door of the drawing-room.

"When Tony got whammied by the network," Ryan says. "But he said he was just going for a nap?"

"Well, some people are restless sleepers," Graham tells him as the Doctor slows at the drawing-room doorway.

"And sometimes they have bad dreams," she says before shoving the water bottle in her pocket, putting a finger to her lips and then whispering, "Yaz, Ryan, go back to the kitchen and get a packet of hardtack and some water. Take your time and then come in quietly and don't talk. Graham, you're with me."

The castle is still shuddering like a haunted house in a fairground ride and the lights flicker wildly in the drawing-room, a lurid effect against the scarlet saturated view beyond the massive mullioned window.

Tony is huddled on his side across the nearest couch, one arm angled under his head as a pillow. He's wisely positioned himself so he faces away from the view. Graham is used to people looking younger in sleep, their features relaxed and unguarded. Tony's face looks unguarded all right, but it's far from relaxed. His whole body is wracked with tension; whatever nightmares plague him are causing visible agitation.

As Graham follows the Doctor through the doorway, he thinks for a moment he can see a small pale figure at the far side of the room. He glances at the Doctor as she stoops over Tony and then switches his gaze straight back where he thought he'd seen the figure. There's nothing there.

The Doctor places one hand across Tony's arm and says his name.

He wakes in a blind panic and cries out, flailing one arm in her direction as if to ward off an unknown threat. Graham could have sworn that the castle shudders in distress at the exact same time.

The Doctor tilts back out of Tony's way and then catches firm hold of his hand.

"Tony, stop!" she says.

Graham thinks, not for the first time, that the Doctor is something of a people whisperer. He watches as Tony responds to her voice. But he also notes that the spooked look in his eyes doesn't so much fade as alter into one of dawning despair when it turns out that waking up isn't much of an improvement on the nightmare. Of course it isn't, Graham thinks after a moment's reflection. Tony is a universe away from home, trapped in a castle by toxic rain and, just for good measure, has been violently forced into a connection with some unknown alien technology. It really shouldn't be any wonder that he's a long way from feeling relaxed.

Tony pulls away from the Doctor's grip. Then he eases himself upright and covers his face with both hands, shielding himself from the reality of his situation the only way he can.

"What's happening to the castle?" His voice is ragged as he struggles to control his breathing.

"You're happening to the castle," the Doctor tells him, keeping her voice level and factual. "You're connected to it, via the neural link, and it's responding to your distress. And before you ask, no, I don't know exactly how that works either."

"So I need to get a grip." Tony manages to take a deep breath. "I just need a moment, okay?"

"Okay," says the Doctor. She straightens up and Graham jerks his head towards the door, wordlessly asking her to follow him over there and out of immediate earshot.

"Doc? That figure Ryan said he saw?" Graham speaks under his breath. "I saw it, too. In here. It's gone now."

"Any idea what it was?"

"Not really, no." Graham realises that some of the castle's shaking and rumbling is easing a little, although troubling low-level tremors remain.

"Right." The Doctor turns back towards Tony.

He's lowered his hands from his face and is sitting hunched up on the couch, much diminished from the brash persona he's presented since that first panic attack in the TARDIS. Graham notices he holds his left arm tight against his body as if it hurts him. Given that the Doctor didn't detect any injury when she scanned him earlier, Graham wonders if this is pain from an old wound or something more psychosomatic in nature.

Tony lifts his head, blinking rapidly, and then stares at them with roughly the same level of enthusiasm as a man facing a firing squad. The Doctor responds by squaring her shoulders like she is gearing up for a less than optimal conversation to come.

"I'm sorry, Tony. It looks like the network is becoming increasingly sensitive to you, which is an issue because the network is damaged and unstable –"

"And so am I," he cuts in bitterly. "Believe me, I get it."

"Do you also get that this means you could inadvertently collapse – "

"The walls, yes, I – "

"Not only the castle walls. The force field as well because that's also part of the network, remember?" the Doctor cuts in firmly. Then she softens her voice a fraction. "Tony, if you can't find a way to control this, there's a strong chance that you'll end up bringing this whole place down around our ears."

Tony winces, but his silence speaks volumes. Graham guesses he isn't disputing what the Doctor says because not only has he remembered, he's already drawn his own, similar conclusions.

The Doctor sighs. She goes over to Tony and settles herself cross-legged on the floor beside the couch.

"Right. Cards on the table time. These seismic disturbances are no longer registering on the Richter Scale, which is good. What's bad is that even though you're now awake, the vibrations haven't completely stopped. And, like I said, they're wired to your emotional state."

"So what the hell do you want me to do about it?" Tony challenges her. "Go into the Lotus Pose? Take deep breaths or – "

"Your panic attack is a response to an adrenaline flood, and you need to stop reacting to it," the Doctor interrupts, her voice quiet but insistent. "See if you can get your pre-frontal cortex to talk to your limbic system and switch off the alarm. Use whatever way works best for you."

"Fine!" he snaps back. "Then I'll do that."

"All right." The Doctor nods and waits, giving Tony time to sort himself out. Graham settles himself likewise, schooling himself to patience.

Only, as the long seconds tick by, it becomes apparent that Tony is struggling. It isn't for lack of effort, but Graham can see that no matter how hard Tony tries to calm his thoughts, a nervous twitch in his cheek and a tension in his body betrays his failure. Well, that and the insistent rumbling of the castle around them, shaking the place like a low-level earthquake.

Eventually the Doctor sighs. "This isn't –"

"I said I can do it!"

He can't. Graham is quite sure that stubbornness and sheer force of will have served Tony well in the past, but he is equally sure that this time they aren't going to be enough. Right now, he's starting to look like a poster for Man on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown.

"Tony, you can't," says the Doctor firmly. "You're trying to get on top of this by bottling up your anxieties, but it isn't working anymore – if it ever did in the first place. That only leaves one option we can go with. To avoid bringing the house down – literally – you're going to have to shine a light into the dark places. Confront your fears head-on and strip them away from the sensations you're feeling."

Tony lets out something resembling a laugh, obviously failing to find any genuine amusement in what he's being told.

"So you want me to talk about my issues? Right now? Really?"

"Yes. Your issues. Right now. Really." The Doctor gives a small sigh. "If we had the TARDIS, I'd take you to the Sisters of the Infinite Schism. Because that's the greatest hospital in the Universe and they'd be able to sort this out. But we don't, so you'll have to make do with me instead."

Tony gives an offhand shrug which in no way conceals his unease at the situation. But his silence makes it clear he has no alternative idea to offer. "At least you're a doctor," he says finally.

"Not that kind of doctor."

"Heard that one before."

"I know the time and place isn't best suited for this, Tony. But, back on the TARDIS, you managed to open up to me about your panic attack without any prompting –"

"Oh and, by the way, I still don't know why I did that."

"Because you're a long way from home and I looked like a kind person," the Doctor says, and then pauses as if she's wondering whether her answer has been a little too glib. She continues more carefully, "Both are which are still true. I think you can do it again now. I won't judge and I might be able to help. You could call it, I don't know …"

"Shotgun Therapy?" Tony's suggestion is barbed.

"If that's what it takes to bring you to the couch."

"Oh, I'm already on the couch. Literally. I'm on the couch."

"So you are. Then shall we get started?"

Tony opens his hands in reluctant consent. Graham drifts over to join them, choosing to stand at the end of the couch; if he takes up a position too close to Tony, he thinks the upcoming session will bear an uncomfortable resemblance to an interrogation.

"Don't start at the beginning," Tony orders, clearly feeling a need to regain a degree of control over the process. "Because whatever went on in my childhood, and in Afghanistan, I dealt with that. And everything else."

Graham supposes some of 'everything else' is to do with putting on his Iron Man suit and whizzing around defending his Earth which, to be fair, sounds like the sort of hazardous occupation that would put a strain on anyone's mental health. He doesn't even want to speculate on what the hell happened to Tony in Afghanistan or in his childhood: it's obvious he's carrying enough baggage to fill a Jumbo jet sized cargo hold.

"If you dealt with all the other stuff, then you must have a high threshold for psychological trauma," the Doctor says. "Which is good. But even so, there's likely been a cumulative effect. What do you think is the event that tipped you over the edge for the first time?"

"Going through the wormhole in space." Tony's answer is quick and succinct. Having committed to the process, however unwillingly, he isn't going to fudge the issue.

The Doctor nods as if he's confirming a conclusion she's already come to. Given Tony's preoccupation with that particular event, the revelation doesn't exactly come as a surprise to Graham, either.

"So talk me through exactly what happened," she says. "I want to know what made that event so significant for you."

"What happened is a portal opened above New York. We were invaded by aliens. We were dealing with the situation. Had a plan to close it. Then a bunch of government jerkasses decided the only way to stop the invasion was to nuke the whole city." Tony pauses a moment, setting his mouth in a grim line.

"And then?" the Doctor prompts. "Don't just retell it, try and relive it. I want to know how you feel."

Tony hesitates a moment and then nods. "I was already suited up so I grabbed …. I grab the missile. Put everything into the thrusters. I know it's a one-way trip. I get F.R.I.D.A.Y. to call Pepper. Want to tell her … I don't know what I want to tell her, but she doesn't pick up. We don't get any last words at all. And I'm out of time. I'm flying straight up, through the portal, and next second I'm spat out the other side into space."

Tony closes his eyes. "It's dark. Of course it's dark, I'm in outer space. I'm alone. It's ice-cold, the suit's failing, the power's going, and I can hardly breathe and there are all these alien ships and cybernetic space whales coming right at me. I let the nuke go, sending it straight at them. Fall back. Look up. And that's when I see …"

Tony falters and opens his eyes. The walls around them shake sharply in an unsettling echo of his emotion.

"Go on," says the Doctor calmly. "Go right into it. Face it head-on."

"What I see is chaos." There's a hard light burning in Tony's eyes. "I'm looking out into a vast new world. A world that's cold and lawless and utterly terrifying. And that's when I know I've been living my whole life in ignorance. In arrogance. Thinking myself king of the hill when in reality I had no idea how small I am, how utterly insignificant. How _fragile_ our world really is. Out there, I can see creatures so much more powerful than I can ever be. And they know we exist. And one day they'll be back. And I'm falling to back to Earth in a metal coffin, I'm sick to my soul and I'm going to die and those are the last things I'm ever going to see. Monsters from the abyss. Coming right at the Earth and everyone I love. And I can't stop them." He breaks off, swallowing hard.

"Just take a moment." The Doctor reaches out and puts one hand on his arm. "And then remind yourself that wasn't the last thing you ever saw. You came back."

"Yes," Tony says, his eyes still shadowed. "And I thought I was handling it. But I wasn't. Because it turns out I came back a hot mess. I got it under control in the end. Mostly. But, see, here's the thing." His voice has an edge to it now and his expression sharpens along with it. "I know the threat is imminent. That knowledge is still in my head. I can't unsee it and I can't let it go."

"Well, of course you can't." The Doctor's voice holds a note of surprise as if that should be self-evident.

Tony falls silent for a long moment. He stares down at the Doctor's hand on his arm. "That ... what you said. That actually helps. That's ... thanks, I guess. The rest of the team, they view this as my obsession and my ego talking. Which, yeah, it kind of is. I have to own that. And when I tried to engineer a solution, I created Ultron – the murder bot. Then the Sokovia Accords broke us apart and now there's no longer a team to defend Earth."

"The Sokovia Accords?" The Doctor lifts her head slightly. She looks like a hunting dog, Graham thinks, one that has picked up a fresh trail. "Tell me about them."

Tony sighs. "When Ultron … happened, a lot of people died in Sokovia. The United Nations demanded oversight on what we do and the Accords were brought to the table. I got the need for a more formal remit. I wanted everyone to sign, to keep us together. Thought we could figure out the finer details later. But one of the team refused and next thing it spiralled, got personal. Ugly. So right now? Two people are under house arrest and most of the rest are wanted fugitives."

"I see." The Doctor's eyes widen in sudden understanding. "Now the team's gone, the monsters are back in your head. It's been worse recently, hasn't it?"

Tony looks down at her. There's no anger in his face anymore. Just a weary acceptance. "Honestly? The monsters never really left."

"They couldn't," the Doctor says. "They're trapped in your head. Because you know that this isn't played out yet. And, far from being safely over, the true danger is yet to come."

Tony blinks, considering her words for a moment. "That … actually makes sense. The Battle of New York was where it all started, and I know the endgame is up ahead in the future. But what I don't know is how quickly that gap is closing. You're right, by the way. It's been a hell of a lot worse since the Accords."

"Not helped by the fact that when the team broke up, friendships were broken along with it, weren't they? Including between you and your dissenting team member. Who, I'm guessing, is the former friend you spoke of earlier?"

Graham draws a blank on this and assumes it belongs to the conversation Tony had with the Doctor when they were sorting out recharging his suit. The Doctor's next words clarify a little more as she asks Tony, "This former friend, the man you fought with. Does he have a name?"

"Rogers. Steve Rogers. And where he goes, so go the others. Because he's the captain. The natural leader of men."

Graham thinks it's possible that Tony's trying to keep the last sentence neutral but if so, he doesn't really succeed.

"Which you're not," the Doctor says. "Because you're volatile, self-obsessed and don't play well with others."

"You remembered." Tony gives her a humourless smile. "Turns out negative labels aren't that easy to shake off. Who knew? Not going to be a simple fix, this one, is it? Guess my subconscious had all of this figured out and was already amping up my anxiety. There I was, thinking I had my monsters locked down tight. Only then I get whisked away to a whole other universe where more shit happens. Which means this – " Tony regards his glowing right hand with a twist of his lips. "_This_ is just the match in the powder keg."

The Doctor is silent for a moment, considering the facts. Then she nods. "That sounds about right. And I have some good news for you: now you've consciously made the link between your existing issues and all the exciting new ones you've just acquired, you have a much better chance of riding out an adrenaline surge. Try to keep in mind that right now there's nothing you can do to put your team back together. So don't let the monsters hijack your mind because they have no place in this universe, no relevance. And whatever happens here, remember you're not in this alone and you do have a team. Because we're right here with you. And you can trust us."

"If you say so." Tony neither sounds nor looks convinced, but the Doctor seems content to take his words at face value. Seeing as the castle has at last stopped its unsettling symphony of shudders, Graham guesses she's right to do so.

"Good man," she says bracingly, her voice awash with positivity as she gives his arm a quick pat.

This does, at least, manage to coax a flicker of unwilling amusement from Tony. "Just so you know, that? That ought to sound like the last word in patronising. Only it doesn't. And I don't know why."

"It's because she's the Doctor." Ryan's voice comes from the doorway. "Don't question it. Go with it. It's all good."

Ryan and Yaz are standing in the doorway carrying the food and drink. Graham has no idea how long they've been there: they've clearly been reluctant to come in and risk interrupting proceedings, and they've certainly taken to heart the Doctor's instructions to stay quiet.

"Are we allowed to come in now?" Yaz asks. Graham thinks she sounds a little like she is asking for clearance to enter a police interview.

The Doctor looks up at Tony. "Can they join us?"

"Okay." Tony puts his hands up to his face, massaging his fingers across his temples. When he lowers them again, he seems much less tense. If he still didn't appear like someone who has totally regained equilibrium, his eyes have at least lost a lot of their darkness.

"I think we heard most of it." Yaz sounds a little apologetic as she and Ryan drop the food and drink stash on the couch next to Tony.

"Yeah, sorry if you wanted to be private." Ryan collars Yaz to help him drag one of the smaller pieces of furniture a bit closer to create a more sociable seating arrangement. "But the door was open."

"It's okay." Tony repeats, and then leans back on the couch before adding with studied nonchalance, "All is calm. See? No wall shaking. Go me."

"And your headache?" The Doctor gives him one of her most searching looks, which Tony meets with a blank expression. Graham wonders how often he uses that to stave off unwelcome questions.

"Fine. It's fine."

The Doctor nods thoughtfully. She doesn't look convinced that this is an entirely honest response, but she appears willing to let it go for now. "Good. That's good. Something to drink should help. You're probably dehydrated. In fact, we're probably all dehydrated."

"That's very likely." Graham scoops up a packet of hardtack and rips it open. It isn't a cheese and pickle sandwich, but it will have to do.

"Oh, in breaking news, Ryan found bathrooms behind the fourth and final door." Yaz begins handing around the bottled water. "So it looks like there's no end to our current good fortune."

"Sorry, Yaz, I think there might be," Ryan mutters, his hand freezing in mid-reach for a bottle. He stares across at the far end of the room. "All of you, look over there!"

"Holy shit," Tony breathes. "Is that –"

"A full manifestation of our ghostly little friend?" The Doctor's eyes widen. "Yes, I rather think it is."


	6. The Last One To Leave

The newly arrived figure doesn't look like a ghost this time. It looks like a small boy dressed in ordinary jeans and a black tee. Tony isn't good on children's ages, but it resembles a kid of about four or five years old. He's pale-skinned with dark hair and big watchful eyes. A _human_ child. Which, ghost or not, is impossible. Isn't it?

"Hello." The Doctor addresses the child in a warm, friendly voice, seeming to take his appearance at face value. "Nice to see you properly at last. I'm the Doctor and these are my friends. Can you tell me your name?"

It appears not because the child stays silent and motionless, staring at them with unblinking eyes.

"Are you hungry? Or thirsty?" The Doctor persists. She shakes the drink bottle invitingly. "I've got water. And some nice hardtack. Why don't you come over here and take a look?"

The child doesn't move. And yet somehow he _does_, blinking out of place and appearing a microsecond later in the centre of the room. He's now a hell of a lot closer to them.

"Whoah!" Ryan looks freaked out. "What just happened?"

"It came over here to take a look, like the Doctor asked," Graham says, the lightness of his voice at odds with his unnerved expression.

"Interesting." The Doctor calmly holds out a hand towards the child, but now he's nearer it's clear that he isn't looking at her at all.

Of course he isn't, Tony thinks, as the boy's brown eyes lock on his. It's obvious who Ghost Boy is going to show an interest in, like Tony's day hasn't been crap enough already. And now he can see the kid close up, he looks a little familiar which is even more disconcerting. Tony runs through the very short list of children he knows and comes up blank. 

There's a brief silence, and then the child snaps out of existence in less than a heartbeat.

"That was … not informative." Tony relaxes a little, easing some of the tension out of his shoulders.

"Oh, I think it was." The Doctor flashes him a strange look.

"What?" Tony frowns at her.

"Didn't you notice?" Ryan says in surprise. "That kid looked like you. Child you, I mean."

Tony opens his mouth to scoff at this idea and then closes it again as the truth hit him. Christ, no wonder the boy looked familiar. "How the hell is that even – no, don't answer. It's been pulled out of my mind by the neural link, hasn't it?"

"It certainly looks that way," the Doctor answers carefully.

Tony is unpleasantly aware of his pulse rate ratcheting up, and of the sudden hitch in his breathing. Of course the Doctor is speaking carefully to him. The last thing she wants is for him to flip out again, shake the castle and unsettle the Matrix. And in the interests of self-preservation, he doesn't want that either. 

"Little you is quite cute. In a creepy sort of way," Yaz says, cutting smoothly through his thoughts. She smiles at him. "Though I imagine you talked a lot more."

"More than creepy Caspar?" Tony forces a smile back at her. "I'd say that's true."

"It was almost three-dimensional this time," Ryan says. "So did the network create it? How would it do that?"

"Maybe through Block Transfer Computation or a variant discipline." The Doctor's face brightens as she starts to theorize. "A computer can't handle the creation of changes in reality, but I already suspected there was a biological component to the network, remember? And guess what? An organic brain is exactly what's needed to compute those kinds of calculations."

"So what is Block Transfer Computation?" Graham asks the obvious question before anyone else could. "In layman's terms, for those of us who have no idea what you're talking about."

That would be all of them, then, Tony thinks.

"Layman's terms. Right." The Doctor shifts position slightly, making herself more comfortable on the floor as she prepares to enlighten them. "The essence of matter is structure and the essence of structure is mathematics. And Block Transfer Computation is a mathematical process that enables the creation of objects or people. In fact, block transfer matrixes maintain the outer plasmic shell and interior configurations of the TARDIS. If you can get the Block Transfer equations correct, you can warp reality to create anything. And when I say 'you', I don't actually mean any of _you_. Very few species have the kind of brain structure necessary for this sort of work."

"But there's a brain structure here that has this ability, right?" Tony pulls out the most immediately relevant thing from the Doctor's info dump. "An organic brain which is … I don't know. Linked into the network, or engineered along with it? Bottom line is, the network's access to my memories and its ability to create solid objects out of pure mathematics is what's enabled it to make an avatar of me as a child."

"Exactly," the Doctor says, and then she puts her own insanely positive spin on the situation. "And how cool is that?"

"Honestly? Right now, I'm mostly freaked out by it."

"Understandable," the Doctor says, after giving his response due consideration. " Just … try not to get _too _freaked out, all right?"

"Yep. Trying that." There's a difference between pushing through his fears and wallowing in them, and Tony suspects he's starting to skirt a little too close to the latter for her liking. And his own, if he's truthful. The Doctor has acknowledged his feelings. He needs to do the same and then move on. "So this avatar of me … what the hell is it actually _for_?"

"Why it didn't just create a proper avatar of Tony right at the start." Graham asks. "Is it because the network is a bit rubbish at this Block Computation stuff? Or is it another glitch in the system?"

"The avatar has gone from being just an indistinct shape to something close to real," Tony says. "So while the network might not have been quick off the blocks, it's improving on the process each time. That's not a glitch in the system."

"No, it's not," the Doctor agrees. "It's learning as it goes along."

"What next, then?" Yaz wonders aloud. "Is the avatar going to get a voice and start talking to us?"

"And _that's_ what it's for!" Tony snaps his fingers. God, he loves a eureka moment. "Yaz has it right on the money. The avatar is the network's way of trying to communicate with us."

The moment he says the words, it becomes blindingly obvious. 

"_Yes_!" The Doctor does a tiny fist pump. "Of course it is! Nice work – both of you."

"Hey." Tony gives a slightly disbelieving laugh. "I don't want to read too much into this, but are we in danger of finding some answers to our many, many questions?"

"Oh, we definitely are!" The Doctor favours him one of her brightest smiles before announcing, "As from now, I'm making Tony an honorary member of Team TARDIS. That's what we call ourselves," she clarifies for Tony's benefit, throwing him a quick glance.

"Huh. That's not what I've been calling you. In my head."

Ryan groans and pulls a face. "Do we really want to know?"

"Go on, then. What've you been calling us?" Graham says with a sigh.

"The Sheffield Posse."

The Doctor thinks that through. "And I'm the Sheriff. It sort of works, I suppose."

"It's pretty bad." Yaz looks unconvinced. "'Posse' is too U.S. centric, for a start."

"I was using it informally to indicate that you're a group of people who share a common characteristic. Obviously."

"Obviously," Graham repeats, with a heavy dose of scepticism. "Do you make up stupid nicknames a lot?"

"Yep."

"We should make up one for you, then," Ryan declares, a gleam in his eyes.

"Thought you already did." Tony flashes him a smile. "Total Muppet, wasn't it?"

Graham snorts and almost chokes on his hardtack. Ryan thumps him on the back.

Tony grins at both of them and then switches his gaze to the Doctor. "So we're ... what now? Taking a break? To do … whatever this is?"

"Team bonding and tea party," the Doctor says promptly. "Always a good thing. The team bonding, that is. I don't usually stop for snacks while adventuring, but this time we don't know how long we're going be stuck here so I thought we deserved a bit of a breather and a ... biscuit." She eyes the hardtack and frowns, clearly aware that her analogy is way off the mark.

Tony shakes his head. "I'll pass."

"Tony." The Doctor fixes him with an unwavering stare. "Is it really a good idea to pass on something that'll give you energy and help you think more clearly? When did you last eat and drink, anyway?"

"That would be coffee. And this morning." Whenever that was. Being dragged through a temporal rift and then taking a trip through space and time isn't great news for the body clock. Tony supposes he should just be thankful he isn't jet-lagged.

"Sleep?"

"You mean, apart from the least restful rest ever? The one I had just now? That would be last night." Under the Doctor's stern gaze – which wouldn't have disgraced the Spanish Inquisition – Tony finds himself amending this to, "There was a bed. I lay down on it."

"Nightmares?" Graham asks, not unsympathetically.

"Some nights are worse than others." Tony tries to shrug this off. "I've catnapped a few times." The truth is he's done just enough to stop Vision, Happy and F.R.I.D.A.Y. getting too hung up about his welfare, and that involves showering, changing his clothes and in general trying not to look too much like the strung-out wreck he feels. "I don't need much sleep."

"You need more sleep than you're getting, mate," Ryan tells him. "I mean, you could practically carry luggage in those bags under your eyes."

"Just so you know," Tony says flatly, "that's not helping."

The Doctor sighs and regards him like he's a recalcitrant child, and yeah, that's a look he's not unfamiliar with. "Tony, take the hardtack. It's not tasty, but it's edible and it's nutritious. Take the water while you're at it. And drink it."

Tony eyes the items she holds out, making no attempt to reach for them until she gives up and drops them unceremoniously in his lap.

"I'd do as she says," Ryan advises. "Because you know she's talking sense."

She is. Tony does know that. Turns out, she's also right about the taste of the hardtack. It tastes even worse than a custard cream looks and he only manages to choke it down with the help of copious amounts of water. It gives him some comfort to notice that the Doctor looks as underwhelmed as everyone else by the baked goods on offer at their impromptu tea party.

"So what's next?" Graham asks. "Are we going to wait for the avatar to appear again?"

"No need," Tony answers him. "Junior – I mean the avatar, Caspar, whatever – is appearing at will, so we can move on out of here whenever we want."

"You really want to nickname the avatar Caspar?" Ryan looks less than impressed. "Why? It doesn't even look like a ghost now."

"What's wrong with Junior?" Yaz asks, putting aside her empty hardtack wrapper in relief and reaching for the bottled water. "Seems like an obvious choice, given that it looks like a younger version of you."

"Remember Ultron? The murder bot? I nicknamed that Junior. Not going there again."

"You nicknamed a murder bot?" Ryan looks at him like he's some kind of idiot. "Why would you even do that?"

Good question. Tony shrugs it away. "Because I created it? Mostly me, anyway. And because it absorbed my A.I. at the time, it contained a part of me. Even spoke a lot like me and thought like me – a twisted version of me."

"That's creepy." Now it's Yaz's turn to give him a look, only hers is more disturbed than judgemental.

"Yes. Yes, it is. So you get how that would up the creepy quotient of this particular encounter? Right?"

"Not really," Yaz says bluntly. "I mean, sometimes people have the same names. It's not like you're going to confuse a murder bot with a small lookalike avatar, is it?"

Not unless you've got even more problems than we already think you have. Tony takes that to be the unsaid corollary to her last sentence and decides there is no way he wants to confirm it, however obliquely. He raises his hands in surrender. "Okay. If that's what you want, Junior it shall be."

"Well, I'm glad we've got the hardest part of our mission sorted." The Doctor stands up, dusting crumbs from her coat. "Everyone finished eating? Good. So, onwards and upwards it is, then. Literally. Because we've explored this level of the castle. Come on, team. Let's crack on!"

After a brief detour for a restroom break – some of the restrooms are built for human plumbing, others not so much – they arrive back at the staircase where an issue immediately presents itself.

"It's way too big," Yaz pronounces, staring upwards in dismay. "I mean, it's not built on a human scale, is it?"

"I reckon we'd need rope and climbing gear to make it to the top safely." Graham looks less than excited at the prospect.

She's right, Tony thinks: the proportions are enormous. And although the staircase rises through the ceiling, looking like it eventually runs up the full height of the castle, there are no bannisters. It's like someone had seen a picture of a spiral staircase and then made up their own version without any regard for basic safety. Which was hardly practical, unless … "There's another way up," Tony says confidently.

"Then where is it?" Ryan challenges him. "We've checked the whole of this level."

"You have. I haven't," Tony points out.

"Time for your magic hand, Tony." The Doctor waggles her own – non-magic – one. "Lay on, Macduff!"

It doesn't take long for Tony to find what they need. He runs his glitzy glow hand across the massive pillar the staircase winds around, and part of it slides open to reveal an elevator the size of a tall shed.

"So how come we could open the kitchen cupboards but we couldn't find this?" Ryan grumbles as they all step inside.

"The network's malfunctioning, remember?" Yaz tells him.

"And … maybe not the best time to remind us of that. Because we've just entered an elevator controlled by that very network." Tony finds a control panel and taps the next shape up from the one that glows. "Here goes nothing."

In the event, the journey up to the next level goes without a hitch. When they step out of the elevator and embark on an exploration of their new surroundings, it soon becomes obvious that this level is for sleeping. The majority of the rooms contain a varying number of beds – of all different sizes – and very little else. The beds are stripped of linen and coverings, looking austere and functional in comparison to the gothic influenced fixtures and decor.

"So these rooms were basically being used as dormitories," Yaz says as they enter the latest room they'd come to. "It looks a lot like a Youth Hostel."

"It could have been a refugee centre." The Doctor turns in a circle, studying their surroundings. "Possibly people took sanctuary here when the red rain came. That would also account for the food rations we found. And the furniture stash. Everything was removed in a hurry. Stored away to make room for refugees."

"Where did they go, then?" Ryan wonders. "Evacuated somewhere else?"

"Off-planet most likely." The Doctor looks sombre. "Whatever meteorological disaster caused the red rain would render most places uninhabitable pretty quickly."

"And the last one to leave forgot to turn off the lights and the computer network?" Graham sounds less than convinced.

"Maybe the last one never left." Tony taps his fingers against the nearest bedstead, running through possible scenarios in his mind. Something about his earlier vision – the light, screaming, smell of death, sense of panic – chimes unpleasantly with the Doctor's speculation about disaster and sanctuary.

"Well, so far there's no sign of any Sleeping Beauty for Tony to wake with a kiss." Yaz gives him a half-smile.

Tony shrugs this off. "Not really looking for one. Just … bad old habits."

"So you do have a girl back home, then? Is that the Pepper you mentioned earlier?"

"She's back home, yes, but not my girl. Not right now," Tony answers Yaz without thinking. He realises after a moment that it would've been weird to suddenly go tight-lipped about his personal history, given all of them now knew about some of his deepest darkest nightmares. "I messed up. We're taking a break."

"Do you want her back?"

"My life's better when she's in it. I'm not sure the same is true for her. So, only if she wants to come back. "

"Right answer," says Yaz. Tony senses he's gone up a little in her estimation, which is nice considering he's sure he's been scraping the bottom of the barrel there at some points.

"Plenty of opportunity here for a proper nap on an actual bed, Tony." Graham looks over to him, gesturing at the dorm layout with a wry smile.

"Yeah. Best not. Nightmares, anxiety, castle shaking. That. The not good stuff."

"Fair enough." Graham doesn't labour the point.

"Tony, when you do get back home …" Yaz hesitates and then presses on. "Could you try for a reconciliation with your old teammates? So you can share your concerns about this alien threat? Go for arbitration with a neutral third party?"

"Not a bad idea, in theory." It comes as a surprise to Tony that she's given this some thought. "But it wouldn't work."

"Why not?"

"Two words. Steve Rogers."

"Your ex-mate?" Ryan asks. "The one the others all follow? That you had the bust-up with?"

"That's the one." Tony keeps his voice neutral.

"Has he been in touch with you, then?" Graham asks.

"By letter. He's … old school." Tony tightens his lips for a moment and then adds, "He also sent me a crappy flip cellphone with his contact number. And no, I haven't written or called him."

"Why not?" The Doctor's query and a certain alertness about her expression suggests she's dropped right back into therapist mode.

The floor under them rumbles and the walls seem to sway a little. Tony looks down and finds, with no great surprise, that both his hands are gripping the bedstead, his knuckles white. He unclenches them, flexing his fingers one at a time.

"Why not?" He repeats the Doctor's question. "Because Rogers said he'd be there if he's needed, but that's a lie. Defying the Accords put him and the others outside the law. There's no way to square that unless they turn themselves in, but then they'd be locked up. And – "

Tony pauses. No more bottling this up. Confront it head-on and then detach from it. That's what he needs to do, right? "And on a personal level? Because when we fought, it wasn't about the Accords. It was because I'd just found out that Rogers' old friend Barnes was brainwashed into murdering my parents. Rogers knew. He just didn't trust me enough to tell me. And then I attacked Barnes. Because when I saw the recording of him breaking my mom's neck, I wanted to kill him."

Tony throws out the last sentence with a bitter and bruising honesty. And then in the shocked silence that follows, he somehow manages to force a way through the emotions flooding his mind until he finds some solid ground. The building settles along with him. Tony blinks, drawing in a quick breath and then releasing it steadily.

He notices how Yaz's eyes flicker between Ryan and Graham before she says quietly, "That's a really dreadful thing to have witnessed."

Ryan looks down as if not trusting himself to speak.

"Yes." Graham's voice is clipped and strained.

The Doctor steps between Ryan and Graham and puts her hands briefly on their shoulders. Then, before Tony has time to wonder about that, she looks over at him.

"I'm sorry," she says, her eyes clear and direct. "You say Barnes did this while he was brainwashed? Which means he wasn't morally culpable. But, in the heat of the moment, I can see how that would feel like just a matter of semantics."

"I never got that far," Tony admits, to himself as much as to her. "I wasn't acting from a place of reason. Not my finest hour, I'll hold up my hands to that. Maybe if I'd known the truth sooner … But the way things are now? I don't see how I can work alongside Rogers when I no longer trust him. And he very clearly doesn't trust me."

"I understand that," Yaz says. "When you're part of a team, you need to know everyone's there for you."

"Damn right you do. So this is going to take some coming back from. If I can come back from – "

There's a soft sound, almost like the brush of feathers, as air displaces next to him. Tony looks down. The avatar – the _boy_ – is standing right next to him. And this time he's a very real and substantial figure, and he's looking straight up at Tony.

"Hey there, Junior," Tony says gently, and for a moment everything falls away until it's just him and a boy who looks like him as a child. A blank slate version of an innocent kid that Tony can't even remember being, but one that's under his skin in a way he would never have imagined possible.

And when the boy unexpectedly smiles and reaches out to him, Tony leans forward and lifts the kid up into his arms without a second thought.


	7. Welcome To The Matrix

Graham is aware of the four of them all calling out to Tony at once in an alarmed cacophony of warnings. A split second later, he realises they're too late. Tony has picked up the avatar without regard for, well, anything.

Nothing happens.

"What?" Tony reacts to their expressions with a look of surprise and a slight shrug of his shoulders. "The network wants to communicate with us via the avatar. So this is me … communicating. Right?"

"Well, are you finding out anything useful, then?" the Doctor returns. Graham assumes her curiosity is overriding any reservations she might have.

"Give me a chance." Tony settles the avatar more comfortably on his arm and then locks his gaze on the avatar's face. When he speaks, his voice is unexpectedly gentle. "Hey there, Junior. You reached out to me and I picked you up. So now it's your turn. How about you start by explaining what's going on here?"

It's a reasonable request, Graham thinks, but instead of responding to it, the avatar remains unhelpfully silent.

"Maybe rephrase that a little?" Yaz suggests after a moment. "The avatar's taken the form of a child so its understanding might be at a similar stage of development."

"Good idea." Tony addresses the avatar again. "Tell me what you want."

There's another long, empty silence. The avatar continues to smile blankly at Tony who stares expectantly back. Eventually, he sighs.

"Still nothing to report? Really? That's disappointing. See, I was always being raked over the coals for talking too much, or at the wrong time. And as you're my avatar, I was expecting you to be a little more …. vocal. Right? No?"

"Maybe the system has reached the limits of its ability with Block Transfer Computation," the Doctor says, her face falling. "Well, that's a bit of a botheration."

"Then let's try something else." Tony directs his attention back at the avatar. "When I picked you up, was that really my own idea? Or did you cajole me into it? Do you communicate not verbally but through some form of telepathy? I'm good with that. Ready and waiting for any message you want to send. Your move, kiddo."

There's yet another lengthy silence. Graham, Ryan, Yaz and the Doctor stare at Tony and the avatar, waiting for some sort of enlightenment while the moments tick steadily away. Then Tony blinks.

"That's …" his voice trails off and he frowns.

"That's what?" Yaz prompts.

"Odd," Tony says. "Get a sense of needing to go up to the next level of the castle. But I can't tell if that's a message from Junior or my own thoughts. Because, yeah, we have to go up to the next level. This one's just full of baths and beds."

"That's true." The Doctor thinks for a moment and then smiles. "Next level it is, then."

Tony, still carrying the avatar, leads the way back to the elevator with the Doctor and Yaz close behind. But Ryan hangs back in the dormitory room for a moment longer and Graham, fully aware of the reason why, stays back with him.

"You okay?" he asks.

"Yeah. I mean, not really, no." Ryan has hunched into himself, his expression bleak. "When Tony said that, about watching his parents die … I remembered Nan and – "

"I know." Graham puts a hand on Ryan's shoulder. He tries – and fails – to block out his own memory of Grace falling and then that terrible moment as she came crashing down to the ground. He remembers the feel of her in his arms as she died, re-lives that sudden tearing sense of loss. It hadn't just been anger Graham had seen in Tony's eyes, it had been grief. And Graham knows that look all too well because he's seen it in his own reflection more times than he cares to think.

"Suppose we'd best go catch them up then." Ryan brushes one hand over his eyes and blinks rapidly.

"We had," Graham agrees. He forces a smile. "Or we might miss some more of the misery memoirs of Tony Stark."

Ryan manages to smile back. "Don't mean to be harsh, but I could really live without knowing anything else about the rubbish things that've happened in his life. I mean, it's not like he's the only one who's had a raw deal, is it?"

"No, but to be fair, he's the only one whose emotions might cause this whole place to collapse around our ears," Graham points out, feeling a slight pang of guilt about the whole misery memoirs thing. He'd only said it to try and lighten Ryan's mood and it didn't really jibe with the whole team bonding thing the Doctor was trying to foster. "Given a choice, do you really think Tony would want to be revealing all of these rubbish things to us? He's only over-sharing because he knows he has to."

Ryan sighs and stares at the floor. "I get that. He's doing exactly what the Doctor told him to do, but – "

"But that particular episode wasn't easy listening, was it?" Graham falls silent for a moment. Then he says quietly, "But you know what? We could've had it a lot worse."

"We could? How?" Ryan glances up, not looking particularly convinced by Graham's assertion.

Graham claps him gently on the back. "Because it could've been one of us with the bloody hand, bonding with the wobbly castle and having to unburden our darkest nightmares in front of Tony."

Ryan blows out a long breath. "Yeah, you're right. That would've been worse."

But as they leave the room, Graham has the sudden thought that worst of all would've been if the Doctor had needed to unburden one of her darkest nightmares. She generally only referred to her past in intriguing snippets, mostly keeping it light and teasing, but Graham's heard enough to be certain that her mind holds a hell of a lot of memories that are best never seeing the light of day.

The Doctor, Yaz, Tony and the avatar are waiting for them in the elevator.

"What kept you?" Tony is impatient, which seems to be one of his default settings. "Another restroom break? Never mind. Get in."

There is one thing, Graham thinks as the elevator whirs into life: due to the tiered nature of the building, the higher they go, the less the amount of floor space, so at least they'll have fewer rooms to investigate.

In the event, they find that the entirety of this last level is given over to one multifunctional space with, once again, everything in it constructed for people who were taller and bigger than humans. For presumably aesthetic reasons, the weird staircase carries on winding its way right up to the ceiling where it's finally forced to stop. The rest of the top floor spreads out around the elevator column and adjoining staircase a bit like a doughnut ring around a hole.

One section contains a massive curved table – a conference table, perhaps – complete with matched chairs. And even Graham's untutored eyes can see that one half of the room is a computer centre of some sort, although it doesn't look all that active. A few lights here and there presumably relate to the automatic systems still online, like the lighting and the force field, but many of the screens and surfaces appear blank and dead. Or at least dormant. Which fits in with the Doctor's theory about sophisticated but ancient technology on the verge of collapse.

"Welcome to the Matrix." Tony looks around, still balancing the avatar on his hip. "Now we just need a Morpheus to tell us the truth about what's going on. Seeing as Junior here isn't coming up with the goods."

"This is the main operating centre for the castle network, collecting the subsidiary systems and synchronising them all into one command structure." The Doctor assesses their new surroundings with a professional eye. "The mainframe and servers – or their equivalent – are probably located below ground."

"Safer that way," Tony says. "Speaking from experience."

Of course he is. Graham refrains from asking about the experience; it's a reasonable assumption that a superhero might sometimes find their headquarters under attack from villains. Probably even more likely if the superhero in question has form for winding people up.

"And what about this?" Ryan points at the elephant in the room. Or rather, the blue object dominating the computing half of it. It's shaped like an ill-advised cross between an egg and a coffin, the details obscured by the partially opaque sparkle of what Graham assumes is a force field. The object isn't the largest thing in the room, but the positioning suggests that it's definitely the most important.

"Looks like this little beauty is linked into the network." The Doctor frowns at the egg-coffin-thing as she walks around it, studying it from all angles. "And it's being protected by a force field. So what are you, then? Cryopod?" She digs in her pocket and produces the sonic screwdriver, but it's evident by the look of disappointment on her face that it's still inactive. She tips her head at Tony. "You getting anything?"

"Nope, but Junior's still smiling so I'm guessing this is where we're supposed to be."

"But what do we do now we've got here?" Yaz asks. "Is there an on switch? Something to wake the rest of the system up?"

"Not seeing one," Ryan looks around. "And there's no list of instructions or anything."

"A list of instructions would be good," Tony agrees. "Only it would be written in alien."

"That's not a problem," the Doctor says abstractedly as she stares down at the sonic. "You've travelled in the TARDIS, so the Translation Matrix now converts alien languages into your own."

"Huh." Tony thinks for a moment. "So something else messed with my mind without so much as a by-your-leave, did it? Still … sounds useful."

"That's the general idea." The Doctor is still preoccupied. Then she lifts her head. "Tony, there's something I'd like to try. And it means you get your hands on my sonic screwdriver."

"It does? Tell me more." Tony's voice is playful, but his expression has turned sharp and interested at the prospect.

"The sonic isn't broken. The network is blocking it. And you're linked to the network. Which means you might be able to persuade it to reactivate the sonic so I can use it to find out what's going on here."

"Can I use it? How does it work?"

"You can use it, yes. The sonic's functions are based on its power over sound waves, which includes radiation, frequencies, electro-magnetism etcetera, etcetera." The Doctor waves a hand as if bored with her own explanation. "It does everything except wood, okay?"

"Why not wood?" Tony wants to know and then immediately offers his own answer. "Because wood is too simple and physically dense for sound waves to do anything to it."

"Yes." The Doctor holds out the sonic screwdriver on the palm of her hand. "Here you go."

Tony lifts the sonic up and curves his fingers around the handle. "Now what?"

"Think of the function you want to use, just like you do with your Iron Man suit. Getting it to boot up would be an excellent start."

"Got that. Thinking now." Tony closes his eyes. Graham presumes this is for dramatic effect: he must be very familiar with the process involved. "Anything?"

"Nothing." The Doctor stares at the stubbornly inactive sonic in visible frustration.

"So let's try something else." Tony opens his eyes and looks at the avatar sitting snugly on his arm. Then before the Doctor can react, he hands it the sonic screwdriver. "Here you go, Junior. Take your best shot."

"Whoah, no!" The Doctor lunges and snatches her sonic back. "You do not, I repeat, do _not_ take my things and you definitely do _not_ hand them over – _without my permission_ – to something of unknown alien origin. Is that clear?"

"Crystal." Tony gestures at the sonic, now safely in the Doctor's grip and with a familiar amber glow at the tip. "Oh look, it worked."

"That," the Doctor says through gritted teeth, "is not the point."

"Thought it kinda was. You're welcome, by the way."

"The point is that the choice was mine to make. Not yours."

"So what would you have done?" Tony asks, seeming completely unfazed by her censure. Of course he isn't, Graham thinks. He's probably inured to it by now because no way can this be the first time he's been called out for overstepping the mark.

"Probably what you just did. Because giving the sonic to the avatar would – "

"It would send the network a message that we want to use it," Tony cuts in. "Yeah, I get that. I figured the same."

Graham winces. Tony's ability to keep on digging the hole he's already in is really quite remarkable. Ryan mutters something rude under his breath and Yaz's expression speaks volumes.

"Well, that's nice." The Doctor gives Tony a hard stare. "But, unlike you, I'd only have handed over the sonic after – and pay attention, sunshine, because this is the really important bit – after I'd given it some thought. Impulse control is a thing, Tony. Ever heard of it? Because you really need to get some. I would've thought your accidental creation of Ultron was a whopping great hint, myself. But apparently, not enough of one."

Ouch, Graham thinks. That stops Tony in his tracks. This time he actually looks a little discomforted by her words.

"But we're all good now," he offers after a moment. "No harm no foul. Right?"

"No, _not_ right!" The Doctor snaps back. "I have rules, Tony. Rule number one is I'm in charge. And now I'm making a new rule just for you: don't give my tech to anyone without my say so."

Tony gives her a single nod of his head, staring at her speculatively. "Fine. In future, I will not do that."

"Well, now we've got that sorted, how about we let the Doctor scan the computers and see what they can tell us, eh?" Graham suggests, hoping to diffuse some of the tension. Then he looks at Junior and frowns.

"Hang on a mo. Tony, did the avatar suggest in some ... telepathic way that you give it the sonic screwdriver?"

"Not that I'm aware of." Tony shrugs. "Acting first, not thinking. Kind of my thing. The Doctor's smackdown just spelled out the gory details on that." He sounds pretty accepting of said smackdown which is a relief, although Graham wouldn't give good odds on the Doctor's advice sticking for any length of time.

"Just a thought," he says.

"It was a good thought, Graham," the Doctor acknowledges. "And one Tony and I should have considered rather than ... " She huffs out a breath and then appears to make a deliberate choice to leave her sentence unfinished. No-one feels the need to jump in and complete it for her. Instead, there's a strong urge to move on as indicated by the question Ryan drops into the ensuing silence.

"So, can you use the sonic to find out what's going on here, Doc?"

"And what we're supposed to be doing about it?" Yaz adds.

"Working on that right now." The Doctor starts scanning the computer banks and her mood takes an immediate upswing as she studies the readouts she gets back. Her fingers start a rapid tapping on the sonic, no doubt interrogating and organising the flood of information she's just received.

"Oh, this is good! I'm getting lots of pieces of the puzzle. Just need to slot the edges and corners into position so I can wiggle the other bits until – aha! There we go!" Her eyes light up with growing excitement. "I have an actual picture! Well, part of a picture. A good half. Almost. I should've guessed whose technology this is, but they're so rare! And they live in seclusion! So why they are here on Marras, tucked away in Kimboray? It's pretty amazing actually!"

"I'm sure it is," Graham says patiently. "But we can't judge that for ourselves, Doc, unless you give us some proper details."

"Reclusive aliens built this?" Tony has clearly taken in the salient points. "Tell me, did these alien Greta Garbo's have feathers? White feathers? Wings, maybe? Indigo eyes?"

"Where are you getting this from?" Ryan asks him. "Is the network sending you these images?"

"It already did: it's the vision I had before, remember that? Because I do. Vividly. That's what I saw. And felt. All the screaming and the pain. Whoever they are, something went badly wrong for them."

"The Cloudborn," the Doctor supplies. "That's who they are. White shapes, indigo eyes, feathery – that's a broad description, but it does match the Cloudborn. And they're tall, about twice human height. This is their tech and, as we suspected, it's been running a long, long time. Although why any Cloudborn were here at all is a mystery. They live in total seclusion on Aestar protected by impenetrable force fields and perception barriers."

"Well, maybe these ones decided to go rogue," Graham suggests. "Renegades with wanderlust?"

"Maybe. It's not an entirely unheard-of phenomenon in non-interventionist species, so I understand." The Doctor gives a tiny, almost secretive, smile. "Whatever their reasons for leaving, they adapted well enough to want to build a home inspired by designs from Earth's history."

"Only then the rain came down." Tony flutters his fingers downwards, mimicking rainfall. "And –" He snaps them. "Paradise lost."

"It appears so. I can't access all the files … a lot of them are corrupted. But it looks like something entered the atmosphere, trailing toxic debris. And once that got caught up in the weather systems, there was a planet-wide disaster."

"That explains the evacuations," Yaz says. "And if the castle was the most protected building here, because of the Cloudborn's superior technology, then maybe this was the last place the inhabitants held out. Waiting for rescue."

"Which must have happened," Ryan points out. "Because if they were never rescued, there'd be no emergency rations left. And well, there'd be bodies. Wouldn't there?"

"There would be something," Graham agrees, not wanting to speculate on exactly what.

"The surviving population's departure was planned around the weather patterns." The Doctor has her head bent over the sonic, still sorting through information she'd gleaned. "But something looks to have gone wrong with the final evacuation. Or was it the final evacuation?" A frown crosses her face as she reads on. "No, the Cloudborn were going to return. Because –"

"Because they needed to retrieve this."

Tony is now standing closer to the blue egg-coffin thing, his right hand stretching out towards the glittery force field protecting it. Graham judges that with a slight stretch forward, Tony would easily be able to touch it and, from the uneasy look on his face, it seems he's having to almost force himself not to do so. He still has the avatar balanced on his hip, and Junior is pointing at the egg-coffin thing, no longer smiling.

"Just so you know," Tony says as they all turn to look at him. "This time I'm not in total control here. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm being coerced into touching the force field."

"It's a containment field," the Doctor says, scanning it quickly. "Which could've been built to contain something … not safe."

"Or to protect something important," Yaz offers an alternative and more promising explanation.

"So, what shall I do next?" Tony cocks his head interrogatively towards the Doctor. "Your move, Queen Bee."

Graham watches as the Doctor frowns a little at the nickname, but he assumes she's letting it slide in light of Tony actually deferring to her this time. Then she taps the sonic against her closed lips, thinking through the next move. "I can't get a reading while the containment field's up and I don't know enough about the Cloudborn to be certain what it is," the Doctor answers eventually. "So – "

"My touch will likely break through the containment field, right? Like it did with the castle force field."

"That's a logical assumption based on what we know," the Doctor agrees with him. "And given that the castle network hasn't endangered you in any way so far, I don't think this – " She gestures at the blue object. "I don't think it contains anything actively harmful. So I think you should go for it, Tony."

"Agreed." Tony pushes forward a fraction with his right hand and the containment field falls apart immediately in a shower of weak sparkles. Then it vanishes completely. The avatar claps its hands once, the smile back on its face. "There you go. That helping any?"

"Oh, it is." The Doctor begins scanning, her face full of surprise and excitement. "Oh! Oh, I see. Not a coffin. Not an egg. Not a cryopod."

"And that's what it isn't," Tony points out impatiently. "How about you tell us what it is."

"It's a biopod. Not all of its components are Cloudborn tech, but its current configuration has all the hallmarks of their engineering, and I was right – it's linked into the castle network."

"A biopod, containing something living? Containing one of the Cloudborn?" Tony demands.

"Possibly. Likely." The Doctor shakes her head in frustration. "Don't know. I can only scan the outer casing of the pod: I can't get a scan inside it."

She and Tony stare at the biopod. Graham, Ryan and Yaz follow their gaze in silence. The pod itself remains an opaque blue, the colour of a cloudless summer sky, its secrets securely hidden from view. Graham has a pretty good idea what – or rather, who – will be required to reveal those secrets.

"My turn again, then," Tony says after a moment. "Getting this itchy feeling in the back of my mind telling me what I need to do. And to do it soon. As in, now."

The avatar wriggles suddenly in Tony's arms and he lowers it to the floor. And before anyone can say anything, let alone start to debate the next course of action, Junior takes matters into its own hands. Quite literally. It catches hold of Tony's right hand and places it firmly on the surface of the pod.

There are no sparkles this time or fireworks. There's just a faint azure haze that creeps up Tony's arm. His eyes widen and he stiffens, but he doesn't cry out or flinch.

Then, without warning, the haze expands, condenses into a vapour, and then surges out to swallow them up in a billowing cloud of deep blue light.


	8. Flashing Blue Lights

The moment Tony's hand connects with the biopod, he feels the familiar – and very unwelcome – intrusion in his mind. This has happened to him before, back when he entered the castle, so he's already mentally preparing himself for what comes next. The visions appear on cue but then they start to surge, intensifying inside his head, and the experience rapidly becomes something very different.

It becomes worse. A whole lot worse.

Because this time Tony isn't just catching a brief glimpse of someone else's lived experiences; this time he's drowning in them, flailing around frantically inside his own mind, trapped in a torrent of memories that don't belong to him. So _many_ memories. And he panics. Because there's nothing to hold on to and he can feel his entire sense of self slipping away. He wants to scream, but can't make a sound. There's a blur of noise in his head like waves are crashing endlessly around his skull.

Until someone catches hold of him. A grip closes around his mind, steadying him until the wave of not-his-own memories recedes. And he isn't left stranded because he's still being held, brought safely to shore. The roar of water fades to a mere wash of sound.

Tony opens his eyes. The feeling of being held is real enough. A woman's forehead presses against his own, her hands firmly cupping his face. Not Pepper (oh God, how he wants it to be Pepper because she's always his port in a storm). The Doctor. Her blonde hair tickles his face as he tries to move his head a fraction, and he feels her warm presence wrap around him. Only it's more than that, isn't it? She isn't just literally holding him, she's inside his mind, he can –

"Shhh," the Doctor whispers, and he can't tell if the voice is inside or outside his head. "Stay still and I'll be out in a tick."

Staying still is easier said than done. The last time a person got into his head, it was Maximoff and she'd meddled in her witchy way to make him even more paranoid than he already was. But this isn't the same, he senses that much. It's still disturbing, but endurable if he stays still like the Doctor says. So he does.

"Well done. Nearly there. That's it. All over."

Tony feels her slip free because it's like a cold breeze springs up and whisks over him. Then everything quietens in his mind and there's a moment of almost extraordinary calm and light, like a sea settling after a storm.

The Doctor lowers her hands onto Tony's shoulders. As she does, he becomes aware of the avatar, caught between them in a suffocating embrace. Or at least it would have been suffocating had Junior been a real live boy. Tony moves enough for the avatar, its face still expressionless, to squirm away so it can nestle directly against the pod. Which, Tony realises belatedly, is pretty much what he and the Doctor are already doing. The pod is still opaque. Nothing can be seen of whatever's inside.

Only then does Tony notice the rest of the team. They're also sprawled on the floor, all of them looking like they were caught up in the same storm and shipwrecked together.

"What the hell just happened?" Graham asks faintly. He blinks, like he's having difficulty focusing.

"Lots," says the Doctor. She looks more than a little unsteady herself as she lifts her head away from Tony. "Lots happened. And I did an emergency mind-meld. Sorry, Tony. No time to ask for permission. Emergency, you see. Flashing blue lights, siren. Needed to act fast."

"Emergency. Right." Yaz puts her hand up to her head and winces.

"Right," Tony echoes, his voice a little hoarse. He swallows and then adds, "Seems like it's open house in my head today. Should I put out a welcome mat? What do you think?"

"I think you're rambling," Ryan mutters, rubbing his head. "Both of you. And it's not really helping."

"Whatever happened, I'll bet a pound to a penny they were at the centre of it." Graham screws his face up and touches his head gingerly as if he can't quite believe it's still intact.

"What happened was an info dump." The Doctor lowers her hands from Tony's shoulders, but she stays leaning against him as if she lacks the strength to move. It's Tony's turn to act as support and he closes his arms around her as she continues to speak. "Only it wasn't a little taster, a few spoilers like last time, but a massive, massive info dump straight into Tony's mind. So massive that it spilled over and dragged us all in, too."

"And you stopped it," Yaz surmises. "With your emergency mind meld?"

"I diverted it. Your mind was so overloaded, Tony, it was encroaching on your own, overwhelming it." The Doctor gives a sad twist of her lips. "Seen something similar before, only much worse. I erased a whole lot of memories to save a life, which was maybe ... well, it's done now. No point in dwelling on it." She seems to almost physically shiver off the past, like a cat coming in from the rain.

"How were you able to do that, then?" Ryan asks. "I mean – "

"She did it by taking an entire alien memory bank inside her own head," Tony cuts in with certainty, even though he's not exactly sure how he knows this. "I still have some memories. Mostly context about the disaster that happened here. But the Doctor detached the rest of it from me and kind of … swallowed it up herself."

The Doctor gives her head a tiny jiggle. "Time Lord brain. Can hold loads more than the average human noggin. Or even the above average." She gives Tony a sidelong look and twitches her lips. "Don't worry. I'll be as right as rain in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

"That's twenty nanoseconds," Tony tells her. "So that would be no."

"Well, if you're going to be pedantic about it … Anyway, the bottom line is we're all going to be fine. Yaz, Ryan, Graham – you only got a tiny glimpse of the info dump so you need bringing up to speed."

"Yes, please," Graham says. "Then maybe I'll try standing up." Like Yaz and Ryan, he's pulled himself into a sitting position but seems reluctant or unable to do much more.

"Then we'll all try standing up," the Doctor amends. "Because we have work to do. The biopod contains –"

"An infant Cloudborn," Tony interrupts her before he can stop himself.

"Strictly speaking, a prenate," the Doctor corrects him mildly. "But yes, it's Cloudborn. Its physical growth has been deliberately constrained by the biopod, but the containment field around it partially malfunctioned and that somehow kickstarted the prenate's psychic development."

"Psychic development?" Ryan echoes.

"Yes, the Cloudborn are psychic. Who knew? Not me. Like I said, reclusive race. Not run into them before. But knowing they're psychic makes sense of a lot that's happened here."

"You're dead right. It does." Tony points at Junior. "This? Not really my avatar at all. It looks like a child version of me, but it's really the embodiment of the prenate. And the organic element enabling the Block Transfer Computation? That's also the prenate. And it's been using a limited psychic link to communicate with me because that's what the Cloudborn do."

"It _was_ a limited psychic link, but when you touched the biopod it became full-blown until I dialled it back down again," the Doctor amends. "The prenate was very eager for you to be in possession of the all the facts. So eager it attempted to drop an entire alien data bank into your mind. And so immature that it had no idea the damage that would do to you."

"Why the need for a biopod in the first place?" Yaz asks. "Don't the Cloudborn have live births?"

"Maybe they lay eggs?" Ryan offers. "Like birds, yeah? Didn't you say they have feathers?"

"I said they're feathery. Not exactly the same thing." The Doctor straightens up, seeming to have regained some of her energy, and Tony releases his hold on her. "And as for their reproductive method, parthenogenesis is the closest analogy. Yes, Ryan. It involves an egg." 

"So when this disaster happened, why didn't the Cloudborn rescue the biopod first then?" Graham frowns. "You'd think saving the kid would be their highest priority."

"The rescue shuttles were like lifeboats, designed for basic emergency use only and definitely not for the safe transportation of something as complex as a biopod," the Doctor tells him. "But the adults had every intention of returning for their infant. They were going to go back to Aestar, their home planet, to beg them for help."

"They knew the kid would be left here alone for some time," Tony takes up the thread when the Doctor pauses. "So the best they could do was jury-rig the pod to the castle network to give it complete protection during their absence. They'd already constructed the castle force field to protect them from the toxic rain. They added the perception filter as an extra layer of safety. Did everything possible to keep the kid safe until they could return."

"So what went wrong?" Yaz looks between Tony and the Doctor.

"They didn't make it out," Tony says, flinching inwardly from the terrible memories that had swamped his mind. "The adult Cloudborn were on the last flight out of this sector and in the chaos of the evacuation, the flight crew misjudged the timings. The red rain swept in, killed them and wrecked their shuttlecraft before they got it loaded and sealed. I'm guessing that left virtually no-one alive who knew the kid even existed, let alone that it was still down here." 

They all stare at the avatar. In the wake of their new knowledge, Tony thinks its blank expression has gained a new and unsettlingly tragic aspect to it. He gives in to impulse and reaches out, putting one arm around it in a vague – and quite probably pointless – gesture of sympathy. 

"There's more you need to know." The Doctor looks uncharacteristically subdued. "And you may not be aware of this, Tony. The alien data bank is the collective memory of the entire Cloudborn civilization and it's always stored in a complex biomechanical shell around their eggs. In this case, the shell itself was connected via the pod into the network and it was still gathering data right up to the moment the adults died on the shuttle."

Tony hadn't been aware, and he processes this new information with growing dismay. "So that means when the containment field began to malfunction and the prenate's psychic development was kickstarted, it was hit with a cascade of all the Cloudborn memories which – "

"Which terminated – literally - with the death of its progenitors." The Doctor nods her head. "Yes. I'm afraid it was."

And that same cascade of memories was what had overwhelmed him, Tony realises. Or rather it would have done if the Doctor hadn't succeeded in diverting it into her own consciousness. And back in the entrance hall, when he became linked to the network … that must've been an earlier - and abortive - attempt at downloading the data bank into his mind. 

"Sorry, Junior," he says, directing his gaze to the avatar. "You got one hell of a shit start to life, didn't you?" An understatement if ever there was one, he thinks. Still, his current team mates should get the idea, being British. Mostly British.

"It really did," Yaz says, looking troubled. "How could it even begin to process something like that?"

"Without the usual adult input at that stage?" The Doctor shakes her head helplessly. "Not very easily, I imagine. But it did have support of a kind because that same malfunction also allowed the prenate to form a psychic bond with the castle network protecting it. And I think that may have been what kept it sane."

"But is it sane?" Graham looks doubtfully between the avatar and the biopod.

"I'm guessing it's as sane as it could be under the circumstances," Tony says. "It connected to me via the network and, if you think about it, the form it selected from my mind was a message in itself."

"You mean it chose an image of you as a child because it's a kid itself? Something like a kid, anyway," Ryan says. 

"That's right." The Doctor stares thoughtfully at the biopod. "There's no question that it's demonstrated the ability to learn quickly, and to reason and solve problems. So, given that it's an untutored intelligence, I'd agree with Tony that Junior isn't doing too badly. All things considering."

The Doctor's qualifier is pretty much on the nail, Tony decides, and he has nothing to add. He looks down at Junior and thinks it might as well keep the nickname even if the avatar isn't actually him in anything except shape. Team TARDIS has fallen silent. There's a lot to unpack what they've just found out so Tony guesses a brief moment for reflection is reasonable enough.

Unfortunately, the moment turns out to be considerably briefer than anyone would have liked.

An alarm sounds from one of the consoles. It has to be an alarm, Tony thinks. A continuous high-pitched sound accompanied by flashing lights can only mean one thing whichever universe you're in.

The Doctor is up on her feet and investigating while the rest of them are still reacting; whatever the extent of the energy drain she'd experienced after the mind meld, she's obviously well and truly recovered from it now.

"No, no, no!" she mutters. So, not good news then. That's pretty much what Tony has already figured.

"What is it?" Yaz asks the question on everyone's lips as they all join the Doctor in front of the console with the ominous flashing light.

"We've got company coming, and it's really not the sort we want knocking on our doors." The Doctor throws up an image of a slender space ship onto a display screen. "That ship is a Venari Annihilator and it will shortly enter orbit around Marras."

"Annihilator, eh? What a charming name." Graham curls his lip. "So I take it the Venari are not nice people."

"Subtlety not their strong point either," Tony adds.

"Go on then, Doc," Ryan says. "Give us the bad news."

"The Venari," says the Doctor, a dark expression on her face. "Where do I start? They're a race who live to destroy planetary populations, which they view as a sport. They have no home planet themselves. Instead, they travel through space in clans, competing against each other in murder sprees. There aren't as many in this time and place as there used to be. Which is a good thing. Only a bad thing is that because their numbers have decreased, they've instead perfected targeted drone attacks to clear an area before they risk going in themselves."

"But what are they doing here?" Ryan asks. "This whole planet is like ground zero. There's nothing left for them." He stops as the realisation hits him. "Oh."

"Nothing except a psychic Cloudborn prenate." Surprising himself with a sudden feeling of protectiveness, Tony reaches down and scoops up Junior, who's left the biopod to join them at the console.

"The Venari want the prenate so they can corrupt it," the Doctor says grimly. "They want to create a warrior with the psychic abilities of the Cloudborn and the violent ideology of the Venari. And that would be a total disaster for any population it came into contact with."

"Listen, I don't want to over-complicate the issue," Tony says, uneasily aware that his own links with the Cloudborn infant could be said to fall into a similar category, "but if I'm psychically linked to the prenate, then haven't I already corrupted it in some way?"

"Nothing about the prenate's psychic development has been textbook, and yes, you've definitely influenced its growth," the Doctor tells him. "But when we get it back to Aestar, the Cloudborn will be able to mitigate that. And you're human, Tony, nothing like the Venari. Yes, you have all of humanity's faults and foibles – and maybe, if I'm honest, and we should all try to be honest, you have a few more idiosyncrasies than the average chap – _but_, and this is important, whatever rejigging you've caused comes nowhere near the monstrous subversion the Venari intend. Trust me on this."

Tony isn't in a position to argue the point so he has no choice but to trust she's right. He hopes she is. Junior's start in life has been bad enough; Tony could do without the responsibility of having screwed up the rest of it into the bargain.

"So how did the Venari even know there was an infant Cloudborn here?" Yaz asks. "I mean, if there was a perception filter over the castle to keep it secret – "

"One that was starting to fail, and I took it down completely, remember?" the Doctor interrupts her. "And remember as well when we first arrived? When I thought I picked up something in orbit? That was probably a reconnaissance scout. The Venari must've been following up on legends of an abandoned Cloudborn infant somewhere in this sector. When I removed the perception filter, they gained access to the exact location." She lets a rueful breath escape her lips before muttering. "Oh, isn't hindsight is a wonderful thing."

"Well, at least it's obvious now what our mission is," Yaz says.

"Rescue the kid before the bad guys get here." Ryan nods his agreement.

"So how are we going to do that, then?" Graham asks, straight to the point.

"We need the TARDIS. That is, we need it right here. Not stuck in an alley somewhere." The Doctor's contribution is also to the point, although it does throw a major spanner in the works.

"Ah." Graham points a finger towards the less than enticing view from the windows. "Slight problem there, Doc."

"Well, we can't just to wait for it to stop raining, can we?" Ryan says. "How long before we're under attack from the Venari? Can their drones fly through this stuff?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. But once their ship gets here, the Venari will probably make any necessary adjustments to the drones and dive straight in. Which doesn't leave us with a lot of time." The Doctor has an abstracted look in her eyes as she answers, the one that means she's thinking a million miles a minute.

"How long will the castle force field last under a Venari assault?" Tony asks, suspecting the worst.

"Not sure. There was a lot more shaking when you got hit with all the Cloudborn memories, Tony. Nothing you could've done to stop it, but that does mean that the network's now even more unstable and it'll take even less time to bring the force field down completely."

"Then we need to get to the TARDIS asap." Tony sifts through possibilities in his head. "Have you got time to make a personal force field with the sonic screwdriver? Like you tried before?"

"No, because I need the sonic right here to run diagnostics on the link between the biopod and the network. I have to separate them safely and still maintain the biopod's integrity. But … " Then the Doctor's eyes light up and her words speed up. "Ah! Yes! I have something in mind. You could call it a plan. It should work. It depends on how much Junior has learnt from you, Tony, and how well you can communicate what we need."

"Okay. Tell me what that is."

"You still have limited access to the psychic link and what I need is for you to communicate with the network via the avatar. Ask it to detach a part of the castle force field to make a separate bubble to protect both of you. That way, you can safely leave the castle." The Doctor pauses for breath before adding almost casually, "And then I want you to bring me back the TARDIS."

"Bring you back the TARDIS?" Tony blinks, not sure he's heard that correctly. "_Me_?"

"Yes, you."

Judging by the looks on the faces of Team TARDIS, they're just as taken aback at this development as Tony. Graham frowns. Yaz widens her eyes. Ryan opens his mouth as if to argue and then closes it again, apparently lost for words. 

"Let me get this clear. You're saying you want me to pilot the TARDIS?" Tony stares at the Doctor. "Wow. This is really coming out of left field." It really is, given how protective she'd been earlier over her space-time ship. And how she'd reacted when he played a little too fast and loose with the sonic screwdriver. Desperate times, desperate measures, he guesses.

"No, not pilot it," the Doctor qualifies quickly. "I just want you to fetch it. You won't need to actually touch anything."

Tony rapidly correlates her words with what he already knows. "Of course not. You call the TARDIS 'she' and talk about her in a way that indicates some level of sentience so my guess is she's not going to let me waltz up and start monkeying with the controls, right? And," he gives the Doctor a quick smile, "according to you, I'd be dead of old age before I figured out how to fly the damn ship anyway."

"And there's that." The Doctor's lips twitch.

"Okay. So how do I get into the TARDIS? Is she locked?" 

"She has telepathic circuits. Tell her I sent you. Get the force bubble to extend itself completely around the TARDIS and then once you're inside, order the activation of Emergency Protocol Triple 9. That will grant you access to some of the backup subroutines. Tell her to lock onto my position and bring you straight here. Got that?"

"Got it." Tony nods. What she's saying makes sense: enclosing the TARDIS in the baby force bubble will allow it to pass safely through the parent force field.

The Doctor favours him with one of her brightest smiles. "Brilliant! Graham, Yaz – go to the door with Tony, see he sets off okay and then get back up here. Ryan – I need you here to help me with the biopod. Time to put that NVQ in mechanical engineering to good use."

"Oh, right. Yeah, sure." Ryan crosses over to her, looking pleased at the prospect of being of assistance.

Tony half-expects Junior to object at being carried away from the biopod and into the elevator. But the avatar takes this new development in its stride. When they reach the front door, Graham and Yaz push it open and Tony steps outside. It's still raining beyond the force field and it's impossible to look through the scarlet downpour and see how the deluge has affected the terrain. He closes his eyes and stands still, trying to envisage a bubble growing out from the force field. At the same time he lays down the bottom line for the avatar.

"See this picture in my head? This is what we need. Can't rescue you unless you do this one thing for us. Can you do that? No, scratch that. I'm not asking. I'm telling you. You need to make this happen. Or it's game over. Understand?"

"I think it does," Graham says. "Take a look."

Tony opens his eyes and smiles. Part of the force field is ballooning outward in just the manner he'd visualised. "Oh yes, I'm good. We're good. Me and Junior. We're all about the teamwork here."

"Very glad to hear it," Graham says with a definite touch of irony. "Take care."

"And good luck," Yaz adds.

Tony acknowledges them both with a quick nod and then re-fixes his gaze on the expanding force bubble. "Keep going, kiddo. We have to get inside that thing. And then you and me, we're taking a walk on the wild side."


	9. A Little Light Ass-kicking

The route from the TARDIS to the castle hadn't been a complicated one and that's the only good thing Tony can find about retracing it while also walking along inside the force bubble like a hamster in a wheel.

Okay, so that analogy doesn't quite hit the mark. The bubble isn't a totally rigid structure: it flows rather than rolls, re-forming as he walks. Unfortunately, the bubble's translucency isn't any help when it comes to seeing where he's going. Thanks to the torrential rain, the visibility's so poor that Tony finds himself essentially feeling his way through a red mist – and doing so on a route strewn with fresh debris brought down by said rain.

Speaking of which – and just to add to the fun – there's also the very real possibility of more masonry collapsing which he won't even hear coming because the force bubble blocks out all sound. And given the small size of the bubble compared to its parent, it likely has a correspondingly reduced structural integrity. Meaning a heavy impact might well wipe it out completely, leaving him exposed to the poison rain.

And then – because his mind clearly thinks that no, he doesn't have enough to worry about already – Tony starts to wonder how far the avatar and the bubble can exist away from the parent network anyway. He can't even begin to estimate the answer to that when he doesn't know exactly how this highly advanced alien tech works or what its limits are. All he can do is tell himself firmly it's safe to assume that the return journey to the TARDIS falls within safe parameters or else the Doctor wouldn't have devised the damn plan in the first place.

All in all, he wouldn't say it's the most comfortable assignment he's ever undertaken. Aside from thinking of the endless ways it could all go horribly wrong, he has nothing to do except follow the Doctor's instructions to the best of his abilities on a journey that's beginning to feel interminable. He thinks Junior might be a lighter weight than an actual child of that age would be but, even so, Tony decides that carrying the avatar has become an extra burden he can do without. When the road looks to open up ahead – meaning he's reached the seafront – he pauses for a moment and sets the avatar down on the ground.

"Here's the thing, Junior. You and me? We're still connected. Or we wouldn't even be here inside the magic bubble. But me carrying you and working out where the hell to go next is getting way too hard. I need you to walk with me. Next to me. Following me." He tries to visualise what he wants. "Whatever works for you. But you do it on your own two feet. Got that?"

There's only one way to find out. Tony moves off to the left, making sure the open view stays on his right and keeping one eye on the avatar. It seems to have grasped the principle. It moves alongside Tony without any hesitation at all, but it takes a firm hold of Tony's hand as it does so.

"Huh. Guess that's reasonable. Come on, then, kiddo. Time to hit the road. Only not literally. Because that would hurt. Me. It would hurt me. Can avatars even fall over?"

There's no answer, not even the slightest tickle in the back of his mind. Not that Tony is expecting one. Junior isn't frivolous. Junior is on a mission to rescue … itself, in fact. The baby Cloudborn. Prenate. Whatever. He picks up the pace.

A few minutes later and not only is it getting easier to walk, but it's also getting easier to see. Is it his imagination, or is the rain easing a little? Good news if that's the case. The TARDIS is in an alley and he'll need all the help he can get to detect the narrow opening.

The red veil is definitely lifting. The rain's stopping, although the air outside will remain toxic a while yet, and no-one will want to play Gene Kelly, splashing playfully through the big red poisonous puddles.

Tony's much-improved line of vision enables him to spot the dark gap of the alley entrance up ahead and across to the left. Finally! Tony's mind races ahead, forming a mental image of rocking the baby bubble up against the TARDIS door. Then he'll sweet-talk the TARDIS into opening up and just –

Hold it! His train of thought slams into reverse. Because the second thing his improved line of vision enables him to spot are several ominous dark shapes in the sky to his right, growing in size as they draw closer. He doesn't need to be a genius to work out what they are.

Venari drones.

"Oh look. We're about to get company." Tony picks up the pace as much as he can. "Isn't that just peachy?"

The drones will be on course for the castle, but he's in no doubt that they'll be equipped with sensors that'll pick him up. And more than enough firepower to pick him off if they feel so inclined.

Which, of course, they do. He sees one split off from the tight formation, angling away as the rest bear down on the lake. In other words, heading in his direction. Tony feels a familiar rush of adrenaline, and the accompanying clarity as his mindset flips towards combat readiness.

The TARDIS is exactly where he'd estimated she would be. Tony slams the baby bubble right up against her, forcing a seal with the door. As the bubble responds by separating around the entire ship, just as he'd visualised, Tony takes a quick look at the antiquated sign on the left door.

'Police Telephone', it announces. ''Free for use of public', it continues. That's good. Not like he has any cash on him. 'Advice and assistance obtainable immediately'. Perfect. 'Officers and cars respond to all calls'. Unlikely to happen in this instance. 'Pull to open'. Not strictly true. He'd watched Graham pull the door to close it.

On the right door is a keyhole with a handle underneath it. The bubble stabilises and Tony raps on the door.

"Hello? TARDIS? The Doctor sent me. Open the door. Please."

He gives the door a hard push. The door stays shut.

"Come _on_!" Tony risks a glance sideways down the length of the alley. The Venari drone is close enough for him to see that it's built like a flying tank and bristling with lethal-looking weapons. No real surprise there. These things are the shock troops of the Venari war machine and they're on a mission to bring down the force field before the Venari themselves move in to collect their prize. This one isn't going to politely ask him questions and wait for a response. It's going to kill him.

"Hey, we're under attack here! Open the damn door! Doctor's orders! _Now_!"

The door snicks open. But before Tony can move, he's thrown off his feet as the bubble force field rocks and ripples under a sudden barrage of firepower. He staggers mostly upright, grabbing the avatar as he does so. The bubble is shredding in front of his eyes. He hears the sharp whine of the drone's weapons as he launches the two of them towards the TARDIS door. Too slow, too slow … damn it! He catches a glimpse of the force field flickering completely out of existence. Then Junior vanishes from his grip, gone in an instant. Tony throws himself through the doorway, knowing he's too late, that –

There's silence.

Tony opens his eyes. He's sprawled inside the TARDIS … hallway, he supposes is as good a description as any. An interior that maps onto the dimensions of the exterior, apart from the fourth wall which leads into the ship. Outside he can see blue light pinballing in a wide, silent arc around the Doctor's ship.

Of course. The TARDIS has a defence system. She's thrown up a force field of her own, one which is successfully repelling the firepower of the Venari drone.

Tony releases a long breath. "Tell me, TARDIS, what part of 'we're under attack' did you not understand?"

The TARDIS doesn't answer his question. Any conversation with her is clearly going to be very one-sided, but Tony can live with that: it's a pretty straight follow-on from his interactions with Junior.

Ah. Yes. Junior. Reason tells him that now the network is under attack, all its resources must be diverted back to the castle force field and that includes the energy used to maintain the avatar. But there's an (un-reasonable) part of him that still misses Junior. It might only have been an imperfect construct, thrown up as a temporary interface, but its form was drawn from Tony's mind and that inclines him to take the loss more personally. He looks down at his right hand and the silvery cut on his palm glows up at him. Junior might be gone, but the network connection certainly isn't.

Leaving the door open, Tony steps quickly through the opening into the enormous control room. He's reminded again of the surrealness of his surroundings and he observes the ship's décor with some bemusement before eyeing the console in regret. All alone with the TARDIS at last, but with no time to get to know her properly.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm suitably grateful for your assistance," Tony says aloud as he reaches the Iron Man suit. "But just so you know, I'd have been even more grateful if you'd not waited till the very last minute. Are you testing me? Hmm? That what it is?" He cocks his head at the console for a moment. "Guess I passed, then. So now we're partners, right? I look forward to working with you. Just give me a moment."

Tony crouches over his suit and runs a practised eye over it as he disconnects the cable. "High-speed charging as standard, I see. I expected no less. Thank you, dear." He touches his fingers to his lips, blowing a quick kiss into the air before sending the suit into sentry mode and starting to run the diagnostics. Then he straightens up. "TARDIS, activate Emergency Protocol Triple 9."

There is a faint alteration in the humming from the console which Tony assumes means that the protocol has allowed him access to some of the backup subroutines. And that's all well and good, but he knows there is absolutely no point in following the Doctor's final, and crucial, instruction.

The situation has changed. The baby force field is no longer in existence, but the parent still is. So while the TARDIS might be able to lock onto the Doctor's position she won't be able to go right to it. The parent shield needs to be dropped, and that can't happen while the Venari drones are out there.

"Are you listening? Hope so. I want information on the weaponry that drone is packing. You know, the one currently trying to blow the crap out of your force field. As much detail as possible. Oh, and see if you can outline areas of weakness and plans of attack. I'm down an A.I. and need all the help I can get." Tony pauses a moment and then adds, "In case you're not aware, the other drones are launching an attack on the castle. And the castle is where the Doctor is. I think she needs some back-up. Do you concur?"

Either the TARDIS did concur or the activated protocol allows him to access what he's asked for. As Tony stares impatiently at the panels where the Doctor had earlier displayed information, data begins to appear. The TARDIS is supplying it in English, or else the Translation Matrix is converting it in his head from whatever alien language is actually inscribed there. There's even a direct video feed from outside. Still just the one drone. Which is good.

"Send the tactical info direct to my systems." Tony steps into the suit. He locks down the helmet as the suit closes up and strides towards the doorway, waiting for the visual display to kick in. "You had plenty of time to interface with them while the suit recharged, so a data transfer should be eminently doable. Oh, and how about you send a little piece of you along for the ride? Maybe an interactive program from your … what? Hard drive? Consciousness? You could take a little excursion with me to wipe out the bad guys before they wipe out the Doctor. Call it a date, if you like." A little cheeky but worth a shot. If he didn't feel the need to push the boundaries of what was possible, he wouldn't be Tony Stark.

After a second or two, the HUD lit up, although not in quite the same way it did when FRIDAY was online. The information spilling across the display appears written in liquid gold. "Very pretty. Very … medieval manuscript. Are you with me? Looks like you could be. How about we start with a little light ass-kicking?"

Tony pauses just before the hallway. The drone will have the obvious advantage when he gets the TARDIS to drop the force field. He has to time it right. Get in the air. Then take the drone down, fast and hard before it knows what the hell is happening.

"TARDIS. On my mark, drop the force field from the top. Three, two …" He barrels through the open doorway. "Now!"

Tony surges upwards with a familiar sense of elation as the top of the force field falls away. Slipping the surly bonds of earth, as the poet put it, ready to wheel and soar and –

And there's a sudden pain in his head, almost like a physical blow.

Tony clenches his teeth and does his best to ignore it. He powers through both the pain and the distraction, the intuitive systems he's built into the suit doing the heavy lifting, and a heartbeat later, he cuts his ascent. Swooping down, he neatly avoids the fusillade the drone sends skywards after him. Giving it no time to react to his new trajectory, he hits it square on with a savage blast of the repulsors, obliterating the drone in an instant.

"Memo to self: add analgesic drip to suit specifications," he mutters, screwing up his face against a fresh wave of pain. What the hell was happening to him? "TARDIS, reinstate your force field. Then we're going hunting."

As soon as the HUD displays the restoration of the TARDIS force field, Tony lifts back up into the sky. Once he gets enough height, he can see the four remaining drones quite clearly, along with the bright bursts of light as they bombard the castle. The continued pounding in his head makes him feel like he is under assault himself.

Oh.

He flexes his right hand in its gauntlet as the implications sink in. This has to be the result of the freaky connection he's established with the malfunctioning castle network. The network had visibly reacted to his distress and now it's his turn to experience a physical response to the drones' attack on the castle.

Well, that sucks.

"TARDIS. I need a battle plan to draw the drones away from the castle and then take them out." And he needs one right now because very shortly he fears he won't be able to think straight enough to put it in play.

The HUD shows two of the drones breaking off their attack and powering straight at him. Okay. So it looks like he's already got their attention. Either their systems have detected him or the drone he's destroyed had time to send a warning. This is good because the pain in his head has roughly halved. It's also bad because it means the hunter has just become the hunted.

The golden display flickers through attack patterns, updating with every move of the incoming drones. Tony knows he has limited options. The drones are heavily armoured and packing so much serious firepower that they'll barely be slowed by the remains of the buildings still standing. He has the advantage when it comes to manoeuvrability, but he only has a limited range of weaponry; he would've given a great deal to have his shoulder-mounted missiles locked and loaded right now. Then the drones are in range and there's no more time for wishful thinking.

Tony throws himself into a dive as both of them open fire on him. He rocks back as some of the missiles scrape past, recoiling from the ferocity of the attack and immensely glad of the enhanced durability of the suit and the improvements he's made to the energy shield. Rolling sharply away, he lets the HUD guide him into a position where he's fleetingly screened from the second drone by the first. That's all he needs to dispatch drone one with a blast from both repulsors.

He then slices left at speed before drone two can fire at him and weaves a snaking path between some of the reduced tower blocks. Drone two follows in hot pursuit, reducing the buildings some more with a ferocious volley of firepower. Cat and mouse. But this particular mouse knows how to bite back.

At exactly the right moment, Tony drops down and cuts his speed to zero, keeping clear of the red rain that puddles in the pitted ground and mangled masonry. It's no longer raining but the deluge hasn't improved the scenery: the city now looks not just broken but as if it's actually bleeding.

The drone overshoots, just as predicted, and pays for its error as Tony rises up and attacks it mercilessly from the rear. There's a satisfying whump as the drone blows apart and crashes down into what is essentially an acid bath, throwing up a violent splatter of scarlet liquid which Tony avoids with some adroit manoeuvring.

The HUD indicates that the two remaining drones have broken off the assault on the castle force field and are zeroing in on his position, but Tony has already been alerted to that by the sudden and very welcome cessation of pain in his head. The upside is that he can now think a lot more clearly and he's also giving the castle force field some respite from bombardment. The corresponding downside is that the Venari have to be aware their drones are being destroyed so they'll be sending reinforcements, and probably a lot more of them.

"Okay. Let's see some calculations here. I need to take out the remaining drones as quickly as possible. Analyse the energy cost of using the unibeam."

Given the drain on the suit's power, the unibeam will be a risk, especially when he doesn't know how much more fighting he's going to need to do. But his priority right now is to create a window of time during which the castle force field can be safely dropped to allow the TARDIS access. The data that appears on the display indicates an energy cost of between twenty and thirty percent. That's acceptable. It has to be. He doesn't have time for another round of drone tag.

The two remaining drones come for him at speed but Tony is ready for them and instantly on the offensive, this time with a weapon they aren't anticipating. He shoots up before them, activating a single, powerful blast that instantly obliterates both the mini-missiles they'd launched at him and also the drones themselves.

"Impressed yet?" Tony asks the TARDIS. "Hope so."

He powers towards the castle, noting that not only is the force field now visible but that it's showing ominous signs of damage on its glossy surface much like bruises on a piece of fruit. Given its age and instability, Tony is frankly amazed it's lasted as well as it has. After a moment's thought, he decides that pretty much the same could be said of his head.

Tony pauses at the perimeter and retracts the armour from his right hand so he can press the palm flat against the force field. Just as before, it parts under his touch and he flies through the opening without any difficulty and heads straight up to the top tier of the castle.

The multitude of windows encircling the structure gives him a good view of what's happening inside – he can see the Doctor and Ryan working on the biopod, and Graham and Yaz over at the screens – and he selects the window furthest removed from them. A quick scan tells him there's no need to use repulsors for this.

So Tony draws back his arms, bunches his hands into fists and punches his way inside the castle.


	10. Ready To Rock And Roll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the long delay in updating. Anyway, here goes …

Graham drops to the floor, throwing his hands over his head to shield it as the window immediately adjacent to the massive table suddenly explodes inwards. He isn't alone. Yaz has thrown herself down right alongside him and the Doctor and Ryan have taken cover behind the partially dismembered biopod. Are they under attack again already? Graham wonders, heart in mouth. This is not good. Not good at all.

"Miss me?"

The voice is familiar. Familiar and laced with exactly the right amount of cocky insouciance to set Graham's teeth on edge, although not as much as it would've done if the owner of said voice hadn't just been whizzing around outside and blowing up enemy drones in spectacular fashion. Tony had certainly got his mojo back, and then some.

Graham heaves a sigh and opens his eyes.

Tony is standing in the centre of a pile of firewood that had once been a table and chairs. He's without his helmet but is otherwise fully encased by his armoured suit.

Graham has to admit that the Iron Man suit looks a lot more formidable now than it had when he'd first seen it, lying inactive on the TARDIS floor. Back then, the armour appeared as a dead, inert thing but, in action, the story is completely different. Now, as it moves towards them, Graham thinks it resembles a metal-plated creature with only a faint whirr of mechanics to indicate it's actually a sleek machine built to hold a human being.

Well, that and Tony's head sticking out of it.

"We saw you outside." The Doctor pops up over the biopod like a jack-in-the-box. "Does this make you our actual knight in shining armour, then?"

"Yeah, nice work," Ryan says. "But, you couldn't have used the door like a normal person?"

"You didn't bring the TARDIS?" Yaz asks, bringing up the elephant in the room. Or rather not in the room because the TARDIS is conspicuous by its absence.

Tony flicks his gaze between them, looking mildly amused. He holds up a hand and addresses each question in order. "Yes, it does; saves on time; and not an option because baby bubble was destroyed by the drones. Junior's gone, too."

"Makes sense." The Doctor gathers her thoughts, quickly pinpointing the implications of his words. "The network is marshalling all its resources to defend the castle. Because what hit us was just the first wave of attacks."

"I figured the same." Tony gives her his full attention. "Now the rain's stopped, you need to drop the force field so I can get the TARDIS here. Before we get hit with Drone Strike 2: This Shit Just Got Real."

"Good plan. And also the same as my plan. Brilliant! Oh, and thanks for seeing off Drone Strike 1." The Doctor pauses and tilts her head at him. "Although I do remember you told me your Iron Man suit wasn't combat-ready and had no weaponry installed. So I'm assuming you neglected to mention that the power and propulsion units also functioned as weapons. You used them to defeat the drones. Am I right?"

"You're right, and if I hadn't been able to do that we'd now be screwed six ways from Sunday." Tony frowns at her. "So, what now? Are you hacked off at me for that? _Really_?"

"For blowing up the drones? Don't be daft. Of course I'm not," the Doctor says, briskly dismissing the very idea. "I'm very definitely against killing. But drones? Not alive and fair game. But you did keep me in the dark about your suit's combat readiness and being misled, especially about anything weapon-y, is not one of my favourite things. _But_," she holds up a hand as Tony opens his mouth to protest. "But then I remind myself that you'd just found yourself stranded with a bunch of strangers and – "

"And I was not in Kansas anymore," Tony finishes impatiently. "Agreed. So I made a choice to withhold some tactical information for my own protection because – "

"Because you were still working out whether or not to trust us," the Doctor cuts in. "That's entirely reasonable. And so long as you're not going to make a habit of withholding tactical information, it's not a problem."

"Not intending to make a habit of it," Tony tells her, his eyes dark and intense. "Now I know you. Now I trust you. That okay with you?"

"It is. Positively tickety-boo." The Doctor nods her head, evidently content with his answer. "Right! Let's get cracking. We need to – "

"Wait a minute." Tony interrupts her before she can get any further. "You do know that the castle force field isn't going to hold up much longer? Drone Strike 1 caused substantial damage. As in actual visible damage. And – tactical information incoming, so listen up – I don't have anywhere near enough firepower left to hold off the next wave for long."

"We knew about the force field," Graham confirms, and then adds more gloomily, "But we didn't know about your reduced firepower."

"And there's another problem that needs addressing." Tony raises his right hand and waggles it. "This connection I have to the castle network? How when I get bent out of shape, the walls shake? Turns out it works both ways. When the drones attacked the force field, it reverberated through the network and this time I was the one who … wobbled."

"What do you mean, wobbled?" Ryan asks. "Like, screaming? The way you were before?"

"No, not screaming." Tony clearly doesn't appreciate the reminder. "Sharp bursts of pain. In my head. I'll need you to take a look at the neural connection."

"I can work out a fix for that," the Doctor assures him. She's started pacing around the room as she mulls over her next course of action. "And once I have, I'll reroute the force field sub-routines to your suit, so when you get back to the TARDIS you can – "

"About that," Tony breaks in and then pauses awkwardly a moment before continuing, "In the interests of full disclosure, you should know that a piece of the TARDIS is already here. With me."

His announcement is followed by a silence so loud it hurts. Graham gives a slight shake of his head.

"Oh mate, you really should have led with that. Because that, _that_ is the very definition of tactical information." Not to mention the very definition of being the ultimate cheeky bugger. Graham is damn sure Tony wouldn't be happy if anyone mucked about with his Iron Man suit without so much as a by your leave.

"Point taken," Tony concedes. Then he immediately starts to try and justify his actions. "But I wasn't intentionally withholding it. More … waiting for the right moment to bring it to the table."

The Doctor has stopped pacing and she's holding herself quite still, not saying a word. But she's doing a whole lot of listening, and Graham is sure that she's also doing a whole lot of thinking. Not least about how best to keep their team united in the face of extreme provocation. Because Tony's crossed a line here and he's not so much stepped over it as vaulted across like an Olympic athlete.

Ryan finally finds his voice and lets it rise in disbelief. "Are you telling us you _hacked the TARDIS_?"

"Hey! I didn't hack anything!" Tony's face is a study in injured feelings.

"Then what did you do, exactly?" Yaz asks. Her voice might be quieter than Ryan's but there's a definite edge to it.

"I did exactly what the Doctor told me." Tony throws a quick glance at the Doctor but her expression is unreadable. "I activated Emergency Protocol Triple 9. Then I asked the TARDIS if she wanted to join me. And yes. I know that wasn't part of the plan, but the plan was toast by then, remember? I was winging it and I thought the TARDIS might step up to help. And guess what? She did. She's currently interfacing with my suit and acting as my onboard A.I."

A barely detectable twitch of muscle by the Doctor's mouth suggests to Graham that she is seriously torn between congratulating Tony for his initiative or bawling him out for showing a complete lack of boundaries and dialling improvisation up to a totally unacceptable nth level.

"Doc?" he says into the lengthening silence. "So … er, how come the TARDIS could do that?"

The Doctor takes a moment before she answers Graham's question and, when she does so, her voice is surprisingly calm. "I was just wondering that myself. It could be because the TARDIS matrix was once forcibly removed and placed inside a human body so – "

"Hang on, the TARDIS was put in a human body?" Graham repeats as Yaz and Ryan do a double-take at the notion. "What? How?"

"Yes. She was a bitey mad lady." Then the Doctor waves away her own digression as irrelevant. "But the point is … the point _is_, I think it's possible the memory of that experience allowed her to create a way of placing a piece of herself – temporarily – inside Tony's suit to interface with his systems."

"Well," Ryan says, not entirely mollified by this. "That still doesn't make it okay for Tony to act like an arrogant prat and just do whatever comes into his head, does it? You could've asked the Doctor's permission or – "

"How? How could I have asked the Doctor's permission? With a comms system we didn't have?" Tony dismisses Ryan's criticism with some force. "I asked the TARDIS to help out and she made her own choice. And a damn good thing she jumped the way she did. Because fighting off a drone attack with blinding head pain and no A.I.? Would've been a suicide mission. You do get that, don't you? Let's be clear about this – I'm putting my trust in you, but it cuts both ways. My modus operandi isn't one you're used to, I get that, but how about you all keep in mind that I'm trying to save your asses as well as my own?"

"Believe me, I _am_ keeping it in mind. In fact, I'm keeping everything you've just said very much in mind." There's a sudden intensity in the Doctor's voice that suggests were she not doing so, Tony would've found himself in a world of trouble. "We're all fully aware of the debt we owe you. Aren't we?"

She turns her head sharply and addresses this last sentence directly to Graham, Yaz and Ryan and the look on her face indicates she's not expecting any disagreement. Which is fair because, while Tony might be a cheeky bugger, there's no getting around the fact that the points he made are entirely valid. And Graham's also pretty certain that the whole force field would've collapsed around them without his timely intervention. With a big assist, as it turns out, from the TARDIS herself.

Graham gives Ryan and Yaz a quick glance, noting that they're not looking inclined to argue and probably for much the same reasons."Absolutely we are, Doc," he says, speaking for all of them.

The Doctor nods and then flips her attention back to Tony.

"So there you have it," she says simply. "We trust you. And so does the TARDIS because she chose to send a part of herself with you. An entirely unexpected and extraordinary choice, yes, but her own. Made for her own reasons. And I agree your modus operandi isn't exactly what we're used to. _But_ – and this is the really important thing – that doesn't stop us being a team. We might have different playbooks but we're all on the same page and singing from the same hymn sheet." She stops, looking like she's momentarily baffled by her own mixed-up metaphors. "Something like that. Common vision, common goal. Insert inspirational quote of your choice if that's what floats your boat. Which, yeah, it probably doesn't. Everyone got that? Are we ready to work together, all aboard the Team TARDIS train?"

The Doctor challenges everyone in turn, circling to face them in whirlwind fashion. When no-one contradicts her, she nods in satisfaction. "Good! Then let's move on."

"So what next, then, Doc?" Graham asks.

"Tony's co-opting of the TARDIS has changed things." The Doctor is roaming around again, clearly fired up with new ideas. "Not in a bad way. In fact, I think it's going to help. The thing is, it turns out detaching the biopod from the castle network is proving a lot harder than I assumed. And, believe me, I never assumed it was going to be easy."

"Let me guess. Glitching?" Yaz asks.

"Glitching and super-sophisticated tech. Always a bad combination. Especially when it's been forced together ad hoc with other, less sophisticated, systems. The whole thing is a mess. And the density of the biopod itself means it's going to be hard to shift it."

"So it would be best to materialise the TARDIS directly around it, the way you did when we picked up Tony," Ryan pitches in.

"Exactly! But I can't do that until I've got the biopod disconnected and functioning independently of the network. So now it's my turn to improvise. I'll splice the sonic with the TARDIS … tendril, let's call it, that you're carrying, Tony, so I can enable communication between us. This time we'll stay in touch, so we each know what the other is up to. No more surprises. But first I need to sort out your link to the network."

Tony steps towards the Doctor, retracting the entirety of his right-hand gauntlet and sending it back into the main body of the suit. She flips his hand palm up and starts scanning it.

"So you were reliant on the TARDIS tendril to coordinate both your attacks on the drones and your own personal defence. Did you know what would happen to you when the force field was attacked?"

"Never gave it a thought. Did you?"

"No, I didn't," the Doctor admits. She studies the readouts for a moment and then looks up with a half-smile. "But maybe there was an intelligence who did assess the situation and worked out the implications. Like I said, the TARDIS can make choices for her own reasons."

"Maybe." Tony doesn't look entirely convinced. "One thing I do know is I wouldn't have made it out without her backup." He gestures at the sonic. "So what's the verdict? Can you disconnect me from the network or not?"

"Not safely," the Doctor says, which sets him frowning. Then she continues with, "But what I can do is create a loop in the circuit and make you into a closed system. Essentially it'll be a mini version of the trick I'm playing to separate the biopod from the network. It's a fix that'll hold long enough for us to get to Aestar and ask the Cloudborn to remove their own tech."

"You're saying that any sudden disconnection will affect me the same way as the prenate? Yes?"

"Yes," the Doctor confirms. "A sudden disconnection will cause sufficient shock to your system to kill you. That's the reason I left you with some access to the neural link."

Tony blinks at the Doctor's matter-of-fact statement. He eyes his hand with suspicion. "Would now be a good time to ask exactly what sort of tech I've been installed with?"

"No, it wouldn't." The Doctor is quite firm. "And you do realise it's not in your hand? Well, not just in your hand. It's linked into your body's electric wiring."

"My nervous system?" Tony's voice rises a fraction. Then he takes a deep breath. "Yeah, not sure why I hadn't really processed the implications of – no, you're right. No more details. I don't need that kind of nightmare fuel right now. Just ... do what you need to and fix me up."

The Doctor directs her sonic at the glowy bit on his palm, and the screwdriver hums as the light oscillates in response to whatever she's doing. "Once I've finished this, you won't be able to pass through the castle force field like before, but you'll be able to control it via the TARDIS tendril if you need to. There. All done. Now, bring up your helmet and let me link the sonic to the tendril."

Tony obliges, unfurling the helmet from the neckpiece to cover his head, leaving only his face exposed. The Doctor aims the sonic at the helmet and the amber tip lights up brightly. Then she studies the data stream.

"My own tech speaking to my own tech. An absolute doddle. We’re all connected now. Hot to trot and ready to rock and roll."

"That's good," Yaz says. "Because we're running out of time."

"She's right." Tony lets the gauntlet cover his right hand again. Graham finds it almost hypnotic to watch. "You can bet your bottom dollar Drone Strike 2 is on its way – "

"The sequel that nobody wanted," Ryan put in.

"Yes! And yes! So, Tony, I need you to get out there and do your best with Drone Strike 2. Or should that be your worst?" The Doctor pauses a second and then shrugs. "Oh, you know what I mean. Just blow them up. Protect the castle force field. Right? But don't take any unnecessary risks!"

"Only necessary risks. Got that."

"Ryan, with me," the Doctor continues as she drops back down beside the biopod. "Yaz, Graham, monitor any activity around the Annihilator and also track Tony's engagement with the drones. And when the attack starts, keep a close eye on the force field stats. Okay?”

"Okay," Graham confirms for himself, Yaz and Ryan as they take up their positions as directed.

“Yes, ma’am.” Tony waves a hand in the Doctor's direction. "Would salute. But not military, remember?”

Clearly not. Graham thinks most military organisations would have conniptions over the way Tony operates but, in spite of that, he still responds to the call to arms exactly like a soldier.

He straightens and sends the faceplate slamming down like a steel trap. The eye slits now glow with a cold, white light and Graham takes a mental step backwards. The helmet adds something undeniably intimidating to the whole Iron Man thing. Which is the point. Tony hasn't designed his suit of armour to look friendly: it's a war machine. And an extremely impressive one at that, Graham thinks, watching Tony stride back through the wrecked furniture and then launch himself through the broken window like a jet-propelled rocket.

“Damn!” Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t want to say it, but-”

"He really is a genius,” Graham finishes. “Annoying, isn’t it?"

"Yes, Papa Bear, he's an annoying genius and he can hear every word you say." Tony's voice, full of inexplicable good cheer, sounds around them.

Ryan grins and mouths 'Papa Bear' to Graham, who shakes his head but declines to comment.

It's not escaped his notice that the more dangerous their situation gets, the more sure of himself Tony becomes. He guesses that right now this is partly the kind of bravado that comes with being protected by his own Iron Man creation, but also suspects that Tony uses the opportunity – consciously or not – to channel his adrenaline surges into combat readiness. How long his superhero way of life will allow him to get away with doing that is another matter entirely.

"He's dropped the shield," the Doctor says, scanning data from the sonic. "He's out. And the shield's back up again. We’re as protected as we can be."

The Doctor and Ryan resume work on the biopod. A fair amount of its innards are still spread around the floor but the amount steadily decreases as, with Ryan's help, the Doctor reassembles them the way she needs.

Several minutes go by.

Nothing happens.

“Any sign of Tony?” Ryan asks, breaking the silence.

“Well, he’s out there. Just sort of … hovering," Graham tells him. "Don’t suppose he wants to land in any of that red muck or on an unstable building."

"You got that right." Tony's voice. "What about the Annihilator?”

“Still in orbit," Yaz reports. "No sign of more drones. Perhaps the Venari are holding a conference. Trying to work out what to do.”

“If there’s so few of them, it should be a very short conference," Graham says.

“Maybe not that short.” The Doctor is currently half-under under the biopod, reinstalling something essential. “The Venari weren't expecting any resistance at all. So they’ll be trying to get some idea of who attacked the drones, how many of them there are and how they got to Marras."

"Their discussions could be what's buying us some extra time," Yaz says. "But if they start scanning the area, won't they find the TARDIS?"

"Probably," the Doctor acknowledges. "But it's not the TARDIS that destroyed their drones so they're not going to see her as an immediate threat. But they'll certainly be making a few amendments to their original plan. The Venari scavenge any tech that they can turn to their own advantage, remember? And after what Tony did to the first wave of drones, that tech probably now includes his Iron Man armour."

"So you mean they might want to capture him rather than just blow him up?” Ryan asks.

"Yeah, lose the 'just' in that sentence, Scrappy," Tony says.

Ryan opens his mouth to protest the nickname, and then closes it again with a silent shake of his head. It's Graham's turn to grin.

“Very likely they will.” The Doctor tugs at a particularly recalcitrant bundle of wiring. “Although the Cloudborn prenate will still be their primary target: they won’t compromise the success of that mission to take Tony.”

“But they might like him as a bonus?” Ryan jumps back as a brief shower of sparks emits from the wiring.

"Yep, I'm a real prize." It's hard to tell if Tony's response is ironic or if he's taking Yaz's words at face value. "Still. Might be able to use it."

“Wait a sec!” Yaz straightens up and stares intently at her screen as the image changes. "Something's happening. If there was a conference call, it's over. I’m picking up drones.”

"This is it, then." Graham steels himself; he knows they're going to be cutting it close on this one. "Time-out is over."

"Yep," Tony says. "And we're back in the game."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to [ciannwn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciannwn/pseuds/ciannwn) who reminded me of 'The Doctor's Wife' and helped me give some kind of context for the TARDIS tendril.


	11. Running Out Of Tricks

“How many drones are we looking at here?” Tony demands over the comms.

“Nine so far. Oh, and there's another two a little way behind them." Yaz frowns at the monitor. "Hold on, I don't think those two are drones. I'm only getting partial information from the system and it's not very clear, but their identification mark looks different."

"Those will be military shuttles," the Doctor tells them a little breathlessly: she's in the process of strong-arming some more components into submission with Ryan's help. "Transporting the Venari themselves. Who will hang back from the action until the drones have done their stuff bringing down the force field."

"An event which I intend to thwart for as long as possible," Tony assures her. 

“So, can you get them all?” Ryan asks him.

“What was that, Scrappy? You think I'm playing Pokémon here?" Tony scoffs; Ryan rolls his eyes. "No, I can’t 'get them all'. I can get maybe some of them. But if they have a mind to take me alive, what I might be able to do is draw a bunch of them away from the main attack. Take some of the heat off the force field and buy us some time.”

“Understood,” the Doctor says. “But no – "

"Unnecessary risks? Way ahead of you on that." Tony's voice changes, dropping the banter. "I'm picking up the drones about to enter the atmosphere. So take five, team. I've got work to do."

"Good luck, then." Yaz's expression suggests to Graham that she thinks she should add something more encouraging but can't quite think what.

There's quiet for a moment. Then Tony starts talking again, but this time he is addressing the TARDIS tendril and asking for detailed information on the drones and attack strategies.

The tension in the room has been ramping up steadily since Yaz's detection of the drones and now it's almost palpable. If there was a clock on the wall, it would be ticking ominously, Graham thinks. Yaz supplies them with a running commentary as best she can until Tony speaks up.

"This is it," he warns. "With their speed and trajectory, we've got ten seconds and dropping. So hold on tight and get ready to party."

"This isn't my idea of a party," Yaz mutters and then catches her breath as scant moments later the entire room suffuses with a shocking blaze of lights. 

Graham recoils instinctively, and then turns and squints at the starbursts striking the force field at bright intervals around the octagonal tower. The noise from the bombardment still isn't getting through the force field. The only sounds come from Tony interacting at length with the TARDIS tendril, muttering asides to himself and, increasingly, making very human sounds of exertion as the combat intensifies. But this time Graham can actually feel the vibrations from the attack, thanks to the precarious state of the force field. He decides against drawing attention to that fact.

"Yaz, Graham!" the Doctor calls out. "Report!"

"The force field's still holding," Graham says. "For now."

"We've got five drones encircling the dome," Yaz tells her. "The others are – "

"Hunting me," Tony cuts in. "Not currently trying to blow me out of the sky. But at least two have what must be … tractor beams? Because the rest are set on herding me towards them and their very … arresting lights."

"Well, try and stay safe, okay?" Yaz says, exchanging helpless glances with Graham.

"Yep. Trying." Tony obviously has no time or energy left for smart quips. "Heading your way. Fireworks likely."

He's right about that. Moments later, just beyond the weakening force field, Graham makes out a bright flash of red and silver heading straight towards them and then veering up at the last second. Two explosions roll out in quick succession and white light splits open the sky. Momentarily dazzled, Graham closes his eyes and feels a definite rocking beneath his feet as the force field is hit by – what? An aftershock?

"Three drones just got taken out," Yaz says tersely. "Looked like two collided and took out a third, or something."

"What? You never been ten-pin bowling, Police Constable Khan?" Tony is breathing hard but his voice holds a note of satisfaction. "I just … nudged one drone into the other. And – kaboom!"

"Yeah, we saw. Nice work, mate," Ryan calls out.

"Doc?" Graham asks, throwing her a quick glance. "How's it going with you?"

"Good." The Doctor jumps to her feet. "Just finished putting the biopod back together again."

"Then we're done?" Yaz can't keep the relief out of her voice.

"Not quite." The Doctor's reply takes some of the wind out of all their sails. "The life support system I've cobbled together needs to boot up before I can cut the umbilical cord to the network. Twenty, no, twenty-five minutes. Max."

"That your final offer?" Tony asks her, his voice running ragged.

"'Fraid so," the Doctor says. "How are you managing out there?"

"Right now? On a wing and a prayer."

"And the force field?" The Doctor turns towards the monitors. "Graham?"

Graham shakes his head; he's got nothing helpful to report on that front. "Down to forty percent after those aftershocks, and one of the drones, hit it."

"Shit!" Tony breathes heavily down the comms. "My fault. Was hoping to avoid that. But – "

"Nothing you could do, Tony," the Doctor interrupts him. "Not when the force field is the drones' primary target. You'll never be able to draw all of them away from it, no matter what moves you pull."

"I've still got four drones attacking the force field right now," Yaz says. "It's not looking good."

"Can't help." Tony is abrupt, his voice stressed. "Remaining two are on my tail. Not looking to catch me now. I'm just playing dodgeball here. They want me dead this time."

"Tony, "the Doctor says urgently. "You need to get to the TARDIS and – "

"Yeah. No." Tony dismisses that proposal out of hand. "When the force field comes down, you'll be a sitting duck. Not going to wait this out in the TARDIS. Not while I've still got something left in the tank."

The Doctor's lips tighten, no doubt quite aware that she has no chance of changing his mind. "You're out there. It's your call."

The moments slip by slowly as the four drones show no sign of letting up their blistering attack on the force field. The Doctor occupies herself by alternately checking the status of the reboot and taking over the monitoring of the force field; Ryan and Graham join Yaz and then play spectator as Tony continues to distract and evade the two pursuing drones by the skin of his teeth.

"How long before the field fails completely, Doc?" Graham asks eventually, pretty sure that the answer is not one they want to hear.

It isn't. "About five minutes," the Doctor says, an abstracted expression on her face. "Which leaves us with a shortfall of fifteen minutes before the boot-up completes."

"You have a plan?" Ryan asks. "Doctor, please tell me you have a plan."

"I have the glimmer of an idea of a plan," the Doctor prevaricates.

"You're going to improvise, aren't you?" One corner of Yaz's mouth twitches in a smile.

The Doctor smiles back at her. "Oh yes."

"I hear you," Tony says, sounding both breathless and keyed-up. "On the same page. Running out of tricks here. Going to go high and wide, then drop down out of sight. Reduce power, act like I'm all played out."

"And hope the drones go back to their primary target and join the attack on the force field?" The Doctor nods her head vigorously. "Yes! Do it! We won't lose much by it, and you – "

"Get to stay alive? Can you believe I factored that in, too?"

If Tony succeeds, the force field will soon be under the onslaught of six drones, Graham thinks. That means it'll collapse more quickly, but Tony's life isn't worth a few extra seconds. They wait anxiously. In the absence of any communication from Tony, the most they can do is stare at Yaz's screen which shows where he is as well as the relative positions of the drones.

"Those other two ships are still in orbit." Ryan points to the unmoving blips on the monitor.

"Of course they are," the Doctor says. "The Venari will only rock up at the end, once the drones have done their dirty work."

"The drones are breaking off their attack on Tony, look!" Yaz draws their attention back to where the drones are looping back to rejoin the assault on the force field. "Looks like his plan worked and they think he's out of action."

"And now they're ganging up on us." Graham watches as the two drones start to converge with the four already surrounding the castle. 

"They're trying a new tactic," Ryan says. "The way they're grouping together … it's different."

It's a one-two-three vertical formation, Graham thinks, mirroring the tiers of the castle. He turns to stare out of the windows where he can now see the shapes of the drones beyond the force field. They're no longer firing. And that is because they're –

"Tony!" The Doctor raises her voice. "Listen! The drones are stacking in one place. They're going to concentrate their fire to bring down the force field. Once they start, we've got about twenty seconds before it collapses completely."

"Got it. Coming in hot. Stay clear of all exits."

"Done." The Doctor gestures at them to hunker down alongside the section of the biopod facing away from the windows and doors.

Timing is critical, Graham realises. Not just for Tony, but also for the drones because they need to destroy the force field whilst inflicting minimum damage to the castle and its precious contents, the location of which they won't know until the field is down.

When the drones begin their final assault, it's in a blazing frenzy of firepower that feels almost as much an assault on their senses as it is on the force field. They stay low and, even though the walls and windows shake under the bombardment, nothing collapses or shatters. Then there is high-pitched whining from the force field monitoring system. Part of the console flares briefly in response to a particularly intensive barrage and then expires with a tortured squeal.

The attack stops instantly. The world turns still and silent. So that's that, Graham thinks. The force field has finally been taken out.

The Doctor darts over to the control panel directly linked to the biopod, checking the connection is still secure.

"All good," she says in relief as she crosses to study Yaz's screen again. "The two shuttles in orbit are starting to enter the atmosphere, which means the Venari themselves will shortly be making an appearance. Lucky us, eh? But at least the main assault is over. We have a few minutes breathing space."

"Can you see where Tony is?" Ryan asks, getting to his feet along with Yaz and Graham.

There's a noise from the staircase next to the lift.

Iron Man drops inside the room with a metallic thud, going straight into a crouching warrior pose; his weight is perfectly balanced on one foot drawn forward, one foot extended backwards, and a single hand slammed hard onto the floor in front of him. His other arm stretches up and out behind him, fist clenched.

"Brilliant!" The Doctor exclaims in delight. "What did I tell you? Definitely going for dramatic!"

"Classic three-point landing," Ryan says with a nod of approval. "You nailed it."

Tony snaps his head up sharply. The helmet retracts. "And I used the front door. Everyone happy now?"

"Very," says Graham. "But isn't that pose a bit hard on the knees?"

"In a powered exoskeleton? That would be no." Tony stands up easily in a display of smooth, mechanical efficiency.

"And you've clearly got some brilliant inertial dampeners as well," the Doctor says before adding cheerfully, "because if you hadn't, those manoeuvres you were pulling out there would've turned you into strawberry jam. Although I notice you're still looking a bit the worse for wear." Her face slides into a frown as she takes in the scrapes and scorch marks on the Iron Man suit and the bruising on Tony's face. "I thought I told you not to take – "

"I only took necessary risks," Tony tells her firmly. "This is … nothing. Okay?"

Tony has an interesting definition of 'nothing', Graham thinks. "So this time you came through the front door and took the stairs?" he asks.

"This time I demolished the front door and flew up the staircase," Tony corrects him. "Came in right under the drones and got inside before they knew it. And the Venari won't risk sending them in to hunt me down in the place containing their prize booty."

"No, they won't. So we've got a few minutes grace before the Venari get here and we're going to use that time to slow them down by making this place as hard to access as possible." The Doctor's already moving as she speaks, frying the lift controls with a quick wave of her sonic. "Their scans will reveal exactly where we are and that we're right next to what they've come for. So they won't risk an all-out assault on us for fear of damaging the biopod. And being Venari, their weapons don't have a stun first ask questions later setting. We won't be able to keep them out forever but – "

"But we'll do the best we can," Graham finishes and slaps his hands together. "Sounds like a plan to me. Let's crack on."

Yaz resumes monitoring the Venari's approach. Graham and Ryan patrol the perimeter and watch as Tony takes care of the main entrance to the top floor; a powerful beam of energy from his armour's primary power source brings the staircase crashing down in spectacular fashion, blocking much of the lower reaches of the castle with rubble. The Doctor, meanwhile, contributes the less dramatic but equally important discovery that the windows have concealed blast-proof shutters on the outside.

"Installed as standard against cyclone damage when the castle was built. Never removed when the Cloudborn added the force field," she says. "Perfect! Should still be functional because … force field. Obviously. Here we go." She flicks the controls.

Everyone watches the shutters roll down one by one, covering and protecting the windows. Emergency lighting kicks in as the shutters lock in place, giving the room the look of a gloomy under siege bunker. Which it pretty much is, Graham thinks. Apart from the underground aspect, of course.

"That's the easy bit over with," the Doctor says briskly. "Now the next part is a little more complicated. I need to make sure the Venari don't get hold of any of the Cloudborn tech."

"So you have to destroy it." Then Ryan realises why this won't be a straightforward task. "Only you can't do that right now because the biopod's linked to it."

"Exactly!" The Doctor nods. "I'm going to have to remove the network's safety controls so I can access the whole command structure and put it into an unstable state. And let's be honest, it's more than half-way there already. So ... if I identify the most volatile elements in its construction, I can create and introduce malware that should allow me to match and disrupt its operating frequencies."

"In other words, you're going to give it a nervous breakdown," Graham says with a small smile.

"Yes! But not all in one go. I need to be able to control both the speed and timing of the breakdown. Because the final failure has to be right after the TARDIS arrives and right as we leave."

"You need to be certain the Venari can't stop the process," Tony says. "Can you work out the most viable destruction sequence and run the programme through the sonic?"

"I can." The Doctor stares at him, her gaze direct and unblinking. "Can you help?"

Tony stares right back at her, caught by surprise. "You want to let me loose on advanced alien tech?"

"I want to let you loose on finding a way to destroy it."

Tony favours her with a slow smile. "Just so happens making things that blow up was my first speciality."

"Oh, I rather thought it might be," the Doctor says, a gleam in her eye. "And that's exactly what I need. Come on, then!"

"Wait up." Tony detaches both of his gauntlets, offering them to Yaz and Ryan. "The more of us the Venari see armed, the more of a threat we'll look. These have their own power source and it's good for a little longer. Take them."

"I haven't done any weapons training," Yaz says doubtfully.

Tony shrugs this off as unimportant. "Me neither. Not … formally."

"And the Doctor doesn't – "

"Approve of weapons? I know that. But you must get in situations where your options are limited? The whole kill or be killed scenario. So what – "

"We're not there yet," the Doctor interrupts him sharply, although she doesn't go so far as to tell Tony to take the gauntlets back, Graham notes. And that, right there, lets him know him how serious the situation is. Just in case he hadn't joined up the dots on his own.

"What do we do with them anyway?" Ryan asks, sliding the gauntlet onto his hand. "Is there a switch or – "

"Point. Aim. Think death," Tony says. Then he glances at the Doctor's face and amends that to, "I mean, destruction. Drop the ceiling to slow them up. That kind of thing. Emergency use only. Right?"

"Right," the Doctor says after a moment's hesitation. "Just … look menacing. Try and give the Venari pause for thought. That's all we're after. Slowing them up. No heroics." She turns to Graham. "You take over monitoring duties. Ryan, Yaz – you're on patrol. Watch and listen for any sign of the Venari once they enter the castle. We need to be ready for them."

"Right-o." Graham nods. No fancy gauntlet for him, but at least he isn't useless.

"I'm going to need to stay close enough to be able to monitor the network's breakdown." The Doctor begins scanning with her sonic. "Given its age and general decrepitude, I won't be able to rely on it falling apart precisely on command."

"And you're planning to do all this, and monitor the reboot and cut the umbilical cord as well as summon the TARDIS?" Tony raises his eyebrows as he steps out of the armour. "Tall order."

"Oh, I thrive on tall orders. I'm the Queen of Tall Orders, me. But when push comes to shove, I'll need all of you to run cover for me, draw the Venari's attention so they don't catch on to what I'm doing. Once our defences fail, which they will, we'll need to use our words, not weapons, to buy extra time. I want you to do that, Tony. Keep them talking," the Doctor instructs. "Get them to witter on about their evil plans in all their ... evilness. Or, rile them up a little. That's another speciality of yours, isn't it?" She says the last good-naturedly enough, with just a tiny glint in her eye.

"Yes, it is," Tony concedes in much the same spirit. "Because I have many skills. Also, I'm a quick learner."

Graham realizes that Tony's last sentence isn't an exaggeration almost as soon as he gets to work alongside the Doctor; it's also obvious he has enough technical understanding to follow whatever jiggery-pokery she's up to with the computer systems. A few quick explanations later and they're settling down to the job at hand like old workmates. The Doctor doesn't say anything, but Graham is pretty certain she's becoming aware that the 'genius' tag Tony applies to himself is not so much boast as statement of fact. Aware and making full use of.

Then his attention gets drawn back to his monitor as the screen throws up fresh information.

"Okay, everyone." Graham pauses and sighs because, really, the situation is very much not okay. "You need to know that the shuttles have just landed. And this thing isn't showing detailed life signs, so I've no idea how many Venari have actually arrived in them."

"Looking on the bright side, at least they won't be arriving in their hundreds and thousands like they used to in their glory days." the Doctor says, looking up briefly before zapping another bit of computer circuitry.

Graham thinks that even if the Venari arrive in ones and twos, they will still have a superior force to Team TARDIS right now. Obviously, it won't be helpful to mention it, so he stays quiet. He suspects everyone's pretty much aware of that anyway.

Yaz and Ryan's patrols take on an extra edge, and whatever the Doctor and Tony are doing seems to be taking place with redoubled speed and diligence. Graham stares at the monitor. The identification mark relating to the Venari shows them lingering outside the castle for a short time – maybe making a scan and mapping it out – and then they move inside and vanish off the monitor.

"That's me done now," Graham informs the rest of Team TARDIS. "Because the Venari are in the castle and the monitor's no longer tracking them."

"I can hear something." Yaz stops dead, listening. "From the lift shaft."

"That's the weak spot." Tony sounds unsurprised at this. "I couldn't bring down enough masonry to block the shaft completely, not without compromising structural integrity."

"We don't know what equipment they've got to shift the rubble and access the shaft." Ryan eyes the lift door warily. "Wonder how long it'll take them."

"I don't think it'll be long," Yaz says, her expression apprehensive.

As if timed to validate her words, there's a sudden and massive amount of crashing and other – unidentifiable – noise from below; it rolls away into silence seconds before a deep, dark scorch mark appears on the door.

"Well, that didn't hold them for anywhere near as long as I hoped." The Doctor sighs. Then she straightens up and spins around. "Okay, team. This is what we'll do. Yaz, Ryan – stand back and don't even think of shooting. We're aiming for a stand-off, not to start a firefight we can't win. Everyone else – "

"Wait up," Tony interrupts her. "You need to finish what you're doing here. Buying us extra time is my job, remember?"

"I did say that, didn't I?" The Doctor gives him a quick tip of her head. "Right, then. Go do your stuff. And I'll do mine."

Tony gives a nod and steps back inside the armour, which immediately snaps shut around him. He keeps the helmet retracted.

"Ryan, Yaz – hold your hands out like this." He flips up his empty hands, stretching the fingers wide, palms facing outwards. "You're aiming with the palm reactor, remember? And we all need to stay close to the biopod. They're less likely to open fire if they think they could damage their prize. The Doctor, well, she's going to lurk behind us and the pod and look really, really unimportant. Got that, Professor?"

The Doctor looks around and flashes him a grin. "Are you giving me a new nickname? Because that – _that_ is actually an old nickname and therefore an excellent choice! Finally! Well done, you!" Then she gives herself a shake, collecting her thoughts. "Lurk and look unimportant? Definitely not very me. I'm more the upfront and in charge sort. Obviously. But yes, I've got it."

Tony arranges Yaz and Ryan on either side of him, with Graham a little way behind Ryan, and the Doctor works on, neatly tucked into the corner where the dim emergency lighting is her friend.

And then all they can do is wait for the Venari to make their grand entrance.


	12. Warrior Of Sheffield

The scorch marks on the door turn into a burnt line and, with a mean little whine, the laser starts carving a new entrance. Tony stares at it, hating the wait. He isn't the only one.

"Aren't you supposed to tell us to 'stay frosty', or something?" Ryan mutters.

"Why? Would it help?"

"Or, how about 'Keep calm and stay cool'?" Graham suggests. "If you fancy a British version."

"We don't need either," Yaz says firmly. "We need to focus. They're nearly through the door."

She isn't wrong, but Tony figures on reflection that a short pep talk wouldn't hurt. "Okay people, it's about to get noisy. Maybe messy. Just … stand steady and follow my lead." There. Job done. And if that last sentence sounds a bit too Captain America for Tony's liking, Team TARDIS are none the wiser.

It doesn't get noisy. This is because the door doesn't fall into the room as Tony is expecting. Instead, it's whipped backwards and away by unseen hands, and they hear a distant crash as it falls down the elevator shaft.

It doesn't get messy, either. The Venari simply rise up through the gap on some kind of hoverboard before stepping into the room. They're wearing close-fitting silver combat armour superficially not dissimilar to Tony's own, that is if Tony's armour had been designed for a nine-foot biped with four arms and a disproportionally small head. The helmet is smooth and blank, no visible mouthpiece or eye slits.

Then the helmets vanish. They don't retract, like Tony's, but just disappear. Except, he realises, they haven't actually gone at all. Instead, they've become transparent: there is now a barely visible shield around the newly revealed heads.

Ah. The heads. The small grey heads with one large eye in the centre, one tiny eye above it and one medium-sized mouth below it. Nothing about their faces looks friendly and amenable to reason. Tony knows he shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but the reviews on this book had been particularly ominous and the dead-eyed shark look in the big black eye doesn't help. Nor do the massive weapons held in both lower arms and aimed right at them. The tiny eyes are blinking fast, looking in all directions like a living scanner.

One of them opens its mouth, revealing a double set of small pointy teeth, and says in a thin nasally whine: "Who speaks for you?"

"That would be me." Tony raises a hand.

"Release the Cloudborn infant to us immediately. Then we will let you and your people leave unharmed."

"Not happening," Tony says flatly. "Counter proposal: you remove yourself from here immediately, and _we_ will let _you_ leave unharmed."

"We are the Venari. We came to Marras to take the unborn offspring of the Cloudborn to aid our Great Wars"

"That so?" Tony says, trying to come off as completely unimpressed. "Well, we're from ... Sheffield. And we came to Marras to take the unborn offspring of the Cloudborn back home."

"You will not stand in our way. We are many and you are few."

"Yeah, no. You are few. Just two of you and a bunch of drones. Several of which are in pieces … that was me, by the way. In case you were wondering. That all you got?"

Both Venari emit a horrible low rumbling sound, like a sack of bricks dragged over grating. Tony thinks it might have been a laugh. If so, it's the least amusing sound he's ever heard.

"We did not come alone. Our full platoon awaits outside the castle."

"Oh yeah? And how many is that? Half dozen?"

"Thirty fully armed Venari stand ready to receive our instructions," is the chilling response.

"Okay." Tony's eyes widen a fraction. Then he waves a hand dismissively, brushing aside the threat. "Doesn't matter. We're still ready for you. We'll fight you on the beaches, we'll fight you in the castle, we'll fight you … wherever. We will defend the Cloudborn, whatever the cost may be. We will never surrender. Got that, Roswell?"

As paraphrases of Churchill's famous speech go, Tony thinks his improvisation deserves top marks for both inventiveness and determined bloody-mindedness. He feels it gets the point across very well.

The Venari stare at Tony. Their big eyes make them excellent at staring. "How will you fight us?"

"Tony raises one hand to the arc reactor. "Recognise this? This is what did the damage to your drones. It's not what I'd call a precision tool. If I used it now, on full power, it could wipe out the whole castle." Tony pauses for a moment to let that sink in. "I don't want to do that, but I will if it's the only way to stop you."

This threat doesn't have the desired effect. The Venari stare back at him. "We have scanned your weapons. They no longer have full power. They now hold only a minimal charge. Once that is expended, you will no longer be a threat to us, Warrior of Sheffield."

Tony hears Ryan stifle a laugh. That's one for the books, he thinks. Always assuming any of them make it through the next few minutes.

The Venari's next words kill any levity stone dead.

"When you have been rendered helpless and at our mercy, we will take you apart. One piece at a time." The words are spoken with a finality that chills the bone.

"The key words in what you said? 'Almost' and 'when'," Tony says, refusing to be intimidated. "You have no idea how I plan on expending my minimally-charged weaponry." Sadly, right now, neither has he. "So, sorry to disappoint, douchebag, but I'm not helpless and I'm not at your mercy."

"Yet," the Venari hits back, its voice pinched and sour. "But you will be."

"Actually, you know, he won't." The Doctor strolls forward almost nonchalantly, her hands buried in her pockets, stealing the limelight like a pro.

The Venari show the first sign of agitation. "What is that female doing? Your female must remain still!"

"That would be a hard no." Tony doesn't bother to hide a sneer. "She does whatever the hell she wants. She's not mine, by the way. And 'female', really?"

"I've got this, Tony," the Doctor says. She puts her hand briefly on his shoulder and he hears, in the background, a faint mechanical whimper. It sounds like a machine beginning to breathe its last, and the Venari are way too focused the Doctor to notice it. Tony silently applauds her timing. Doing it in style, oh yes.

"Let me try and explain things to the Venari in a way they might understand," the Doctor continues, sounding like a teacher faced with a class of especially dense students. "You see, I've met people like them before and they have a very particular way of looking at things. For example, they think it's perfectly all right to slaughter others for the greater glory of their own reputation."

"Yeah, and we call those people utter bastards," Ryan says.

"Quite right." The Doctor nods her head. "We really don't like that kind of behaviour where we come from."

"Sheffield." The Venari state contemptuously. "We have no record of this place."

"That's a shame," the Doctor says, her voice light and almost friendly. Almost. "How about I tell you what Sheffield's famous for? Steel. That's what. The actual physical stuff. An alloy of iron and carbon." She throws Tony a smile. It's a warm smile, but he can read the message underpinning it: we're on the home stretch, she's saying, be prepared.

"Iron, of course, being the base metal of steel." Tony smiles back. He's ready.

"Your lesson in metallurgy is of no interest to us." The Venari have missed the by-play. But a quick glance is all Tony needs to tell him that Yaz, Graham and Ryan haven't. Sheffield Posse for the win. He hopes.

"Iron, carbon, other elements – it's the mix of components that's part of the reason why steel is so strong," the Doctor goes on as if the Venari hadn't spoken. "But the word itself also describes a particular quality – people with hearts of steel are full of resolution and determination. And that's us." She gestures at Graham, Ryan, Yaz and Tony and then sharpens her voice, staring the Venari down. "We're stronger together, and we're not going to stand aside and let you take this infant. We're not going to let you deprive it of the life its parents tried so desperately to give it. And we're not going to let you warp it into your own twisted image. Because you're monsters. And I'm the woman who stops monsters like it's going out of fashion."

"You cannot stop us with your words," the Venari sneer. "Or with your friends and their hearts of steel."

"Can I not?" The Doctor faces them, her contempt visible in every line of her body. "Just look at you! Do you really think you're living the dream here, with your never-ending mission to conquer and destroy? What else do you have? Let's see. That would be nothing, wouldn't it? Because you never stop to cry for love, laugh with a friend, watch a wave upon the sand ... and now I'm chasing after daft metaphors when all I really need to say is that you don't have a clue what it actually means to live. And those people I've met, the ones that think like you? Do you want to know what happened to them? My name is the Doctor. Look me up and find out. And then get yourselves off this planet while you still can. Last chance."

The Venari refuse to back down. Their eyes glitter, cold and merciless. "We will not. We will take the biopod and you will move out of our way."

"All right. If that's the way you want to play it. You've made your choice." The Doctor nods at everyone to move aside and then she stands, arms folded, with a look on her face that suggests she's resigned to the inevitable. The key thing there, of course, being what inevitable event she's resigned to, Tony thinks as he directs Yaz, Ryan and Graham a safe distance away from the biopod.

"For your cooperation, we will let you all live." The Venari are definitely scenting victory now. "But we will take the warrior with us."

"So we don't all get to live, then?" Tony comes back at them. "Because when you've taken me apart piece by piece, definitely sure I'll be dead. You changed the deal you proposed just a couple of seconds after you proposed it. And I'm not okay with that. Are you okay with that, Doctor?" He knows damn well she isn't, but if there's a need to keep the Venari's attention until the last possible moment, then he's in, buying time the best way he can.

The Doctor sighs dramatically and shakes her head like she's auditioning for community theatre. "I know, Tony. They're not to be trusted. It's pretty much what I expected, to be honest. But, remember, everyone, I did give them a chance to walk away from this."

"You did," Yaz confirms. "We all heard you. They didn't deserve it, but you gave it to them anyway."

"Well, there you are, then."

Tony tenses as the now familiar wheezing and groaning sound splits the air around them. Not because he isn't expecting it, but because he knows this is the crunch point. The Venari, however, know nothing. They freeze in place, their tiny eyes scanning rapidly for the source of the disturbance, leaving the Doctor to take full advantage of their confusion and dart back to the computers.

She yanks out the umbilical cord just as the TARDIS begins to flicker into view and starts to take shape in the space where the biopod rests. The Venari stand uncertainly, seeming half-mesmerised by the blue flashing light. Tony gets their reaction – seen from the outside, the materialisation is as incongruous as it is implausible – but the Doctor's in full flow and pays it no heed. Without a moment's pause, she whirls and zaps the sonic at the control banks.

And this is the moment where there should be fireworks because the system's been rigged to explode. Tony braces himself accordingly, ready to act as a shield if necessary. But, to his consternation, all he hears is just a feeble clunk as if someone had popped open an elderly bottle of champagne. Shit. The glitching is continuing right down to the wire, and –

And he has no time to dwell on the implications because, with high-pitched snarls of rage, the Venari surge back to life and turn on the Doctor. Tony's ready for them. Before they even manage to raise their weapons, he's drawn up his helmet and stepped into the line of fire, blocking her from attack.

The Venari hesitate. Of course they do: the greedy little bastards want to get their grubby hands on his tech. Only he can't use the unibeam on the Venari because even with a minimal charge, he'd be endangering all of them. And he has no idea what the Doctor plans on doing now. He only knows that she needs to pull off one hell of an improvisation for them to all make it out of here in one piece.

Then Graham yells something unintelligible at Yaz and Ryan. And with a sudden rush of exultation, Tony sees the two of them take aim with the gauntlets and fire into the ceiling directly above the Venari.

The ceiling drops straight down on top of the Venari. The thunderous sound of the roof partially collapsing clashes horribly against the high-pitched echoing wail of the TARDIS completing her materialisation sequence. But then both sounds fade away, leaving a pile of rubble and the TARDIS standing square and solid with the biopod safely ensconced inside. Tony lets out a long breath of relief as Team TARDIS are treated to a sudden and welcome silence. For a long moment, they all stand and stare at each other with slightly incredulous looks and smiles, not quite believing that everything has worked out as they planned. More or less

Except it hasn't, Tony remembers. Not yet. The Cloudborn tech remains largely intact. And even though the health of the Venari under the rubble is open to question – their helmets and armour should've protected them from the worst – the same can't be said of the rest of their cohort who won't take long to make an appearance.

"Into the TARDIS," the Doctor orders them, obviously having the same thoughts herself. She adjusts the sonic some more. "I just need to – "

Tony flips off the faceplate. "No time. Let me. I've enough power left to light this up like the fourth of July. Create a cascade effect that'll ricochet right through the main frame and servers."

"Do it." The Doctor waves him forward like she's ushering him onto the stage.

"Not until you're in the TARDIS. No unnecessary risks, remember?"

"Only necessary ones. Got that." The Doctor grins at him as she makes a quick retreat back to the TARDIS.

There's noise outside now. Judging by the way the sound is increasing, Tony hazards a guess that some of the remaining Venari troops are heading up to the hole in the castle roof and he doesn't plan on being in the vicinity when they arrive.

He drops the faceplate and the familiar – mostly familiar – display of the HUD spreads out before him. "Hello, TARDIS, my old friend. I need one last ditch throw of the dice. Sorry. Mixing my metaphors there. Been a long day. Put everything left into the unibeam. Nearly everything. Leave me just enough juice to make it back to your police box."

The final blast from the unibeam lights up the top floor of the castle like a beacon. And Tony makes it back inside the TARDIS about two seconds before it explodes completely. The door closes with finality on the ensuing inferno and he knows that several of the Venari won't be surviving this. Not that Tony will lose any sleep over it. Nor, he suspects, will the Doctor. She'd given the Venari a chance to walk away and they chose not to take it.

Tony's ears are assaulted by the sound of the TARDIS take-off as he opens up the suit and steps out. The arc reactor flickers, the light dying. And Tony sways, caught out by a sudden wave of exhaustion as the adrenaline wears off, and newly aware of the numerous bruises and scrapes he's taken. One thing for sure: the fresh paint sheen of the Mark 47 is a thing of the past. Ryan puts out a hand to steady him.

"Ever considered you might be getting too old for this shit, oh Warrior of Sheffield?"

"Back off, Scrappy." Tony lacks the energy or the will to put much heat into his reply. "It happens."

It's happened recently with rather more frequency than Tony wants to admit, especially after extended bouts of nightmares, insomnia and, yeah, moping. Maybe he needs to take this as a wake-up call, then. Lay out a health regime when he gets back. Eat green stuff. Go running. Check out how Rhodey's doing with the prosthetic. And … not check in on Pepper because she told him to leave her alone and that's not something he can afford to screw up. But, pay more attention to Peter. He definitely needs to do that because he's supposed to be his mentor and the kid looks up to him for reasons which sometimes baffle the hell out of Tony.

"Have you forgotten the whole thing where Tony was soulmates with the castle network?" Yaz is saying, shaking her head at Ryan. "I imagine this wasn't exactly a normal day at the office. Even by his standards."

"Yep. What she said." Tony feels somewhat vindicated and rallies a little. "Hey, Graham. Didn't catch what you shouted at Yaz and Ryan to get them to shoot out the ceiling. But, nice work."

"Well, I said 'Emergency' because you told them the gauntlets were for emergency use only back when you handed them out," Graham says. " And I thought the Venari being about to zap us all to kingdom come constituted an actual emergency."

"And we aimed for the ceiling because that was what you suggested doing," Yaz contributes. "Though, to be honest, it's not like we had a lot of strategies to choose from."

"It was an excellent example of a team working together," the Doctor calls out from over by the console. She rather awkwardly fist-pumps the air. "Go Sheffield Posse!"

"Yes, go us," says Ryan. Then he looks at the Iron Man suit and shakes his head. "Is that thing on the blink again? Mate, you really need to start carrying a spare battery."

Tony closes his eyes briefly on a sigh. Inwardly he concedes the point; he needs to be better prepared for unknown extra-terrestrial threats, not just known ones like the Chitauri. But outwardly, he shrugs it off.

"Yep, I really should've beefed up the power core on a prototype so I could fight off alien drones I didn't even know existed. My bad. Hey Ryan, how about you and Yaz help me get the suit past the biopod and over to the console? Because that would actually be useful."

"Sounds like a plan." Graham nods. "And while you lot do that, I'll go and pop the kettle on."

"What?" Tony blinks. Then he catches on. "This is tea again, isn't it?"

"Of course it is." Ryan pats Tony's shoulder. "We're the Brit Family Robinson, remember? What do you expect?"

Graham makes the tea, but at least no-one expects Tony to actually drink it. He accepts an offer of water instead once he's retrieved the gauntlets from Yaz and Ryan and then re-attached the entire Iron Man suit back to the recharging cable.

Yaz, Ryan and Graham remain in the kitchen – Tony suspects a cheese and pickle sandwich is about to figure prominently in Graham's future. The Doctor is still busy at the main console and he guesses she's setting up the route to Aestar.

"What about the TARDIS tendril?" he asks, watching her work.

"It'll return to the TARDIS Matrix," the Doctor tells him cheerfully. "Should be doing that right now, in fact, but once your suit is recharged, you can check. "

"Why not have the tendril permanently linked to your sonic?"

"Good idea in theory, but it would die if it was too long apart from the Matrix, and the Matrix as a whole would be weakened. You requested a temporary fix in an emergency which the TARDIS agreed to, but that's all it ever could be." There's a finality to the Doctor's explanation which closes off that line of conversation, so Tony takes up another.

"Next stop Aestar?"

"Eventually. Remember, the Cloudborn live in total seclusion, protected by force fields and perception barriers. I could find a way through if I looked into their collective memory stored in here," the Doctor taps her head. "But that would be unnecessarily rude, and more than a little bit aggressive. So I've bypassed their systems to send them a message instead. A top priority message, explaining the situation and requesting access."

"Well, let's hope Aestar isn't anything like our last destination," Graham remarks, coming out of the kitchen clutching the remains of a sandwich.

"The total seclusion part means I have no idea what the planet's like," the Doctor says. "But I'm pretty certain it will have no deadly red rain, if that helps. Ah!" She peers down at something incoming on the console. "That was quick. The Cloudborn have picked up my message … they've sent coordinates. Along with a handy code to unlock all those force fields and perception barriers. Which I am entering into the TARDIS right now."

Yaz and Ryan join them as Graham swallows the last of his sandwich and they wait next to the biopod. Tony knows exactly when the TARDIS reaches their destination because it's the moment when their ears are assaulted by the hideous materialisation soundtrack.

"Does the TARDIS always sound like this?" he asks the Doctor in genuine interest. "The whole tortured elephant noise - is it normal?"

"Very normal. It's a side effect of the rending of the space-time continuum as the TARDIS enters or exits the vortex," the Doctor says, before adding more obscurely, and a little defensively, "And it has absolutely nothing to do with me leaving the parking brake on. Anyway, moving on ... we're going to actually meet the Cloudborn! How cool is that? I'm excited! Are you excited?"

"Maybe," Tony hedges as the other three signal their agreement in various ways, although none of them display the Doctor's level of excitement which closely resembles that of a small child in the grip of a massive sugar rush. "Honestly? I'll be happy if they just get all this … crap out of my head." And then he can go home.

"Fair enough," the Doctor acknowledges. "And I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige when we're returning their long-lost offspring. So come on, everyone! Shake a leg!"


	13. Nice Knowing You

Tony's first impression of Aestar is that it's just a white, empty space. Not a cold, winter white, but more the blank, impersonal white of a clinical facility. Tony thinks that may well be where they've been directed, given that both he and the Doctor are in need of some kind of medical procedure to relieve them of Cloudborn memories – and tech, in his case.

There's no way of knowing where the floor ends and the walls begin. If there are any walls. Or any ceiling. Tony knows there's definitely a floor because he can feel it, hard and reassuringly solid under his feet, and he focuses on that because the lack of a detectable horizon is unnerving to both eyes and brain. Well, it is to his. Perhaps a race that communicates psychically has a different way of seeing things as well.

The Cloudborn themselves don't so much arrive as come into focus. There are two of them, and they're tall and there, fortunately, any comparisons to the Venari end: these newcomers aren't wearing armour and the lack of obvious weaponry is a welcome sight. White feather-like skin covers every scrap of their lanky frames except for their unblinking and brilliant indigo eyes. They have no mouth. As a psychic race, they may not need one. Tony assumes they have ears, or can lip read, because the Doctor immediately begins speaking to them.

"Hello there! Good to meet you! So you got my message. Brilliant! The biopod is in my TARDIS – that's the blue box behind me – and it really should be linked up to your systems pronto. I did a nifty little fix, but it won't hold forever. I'm the Doctor, by the way – the one with your collective memory stored in my noggin." She taps her head. "But I'm betting you'll be able to whisk that out in no time. Oh, and this is Tony – the one who got psychically linked to your network and your unborn infant. He needs you to remove your technology from his nervous system and do a spot of mind disentanglement while you're at it. Sounds complicated, but no big deal for you, I'm sure."

Tony clears his throat before voicing a request close to his heart: at this point, he's just about holding it all together and he could really do without anything else to upset the apple cart. "And if this mind disentanglement could be pain-free, that would be great. Because the actual entanglement? Really wasn't."

"Good point," the Doctor says. "Pain-free would be perfect. Now, where do you want us?"

The Cloudborn don't speak. But Tony is aware of … not a voice, exactly, but more of a slight nudge in his mind. "Uh, we have to go that way." He gestures vaguely into the void. "Maybe."

The Doctor nods. "I got that, too."

"I didn't," says Ryan, looking a little put-out. Graham and Yaz shake their heads; clearly they haven't picked up a message either.

"So they only want Tony and me. Makes sense. We're the ones in need of their help," the Doctor reasons. "Sorry folks, but you three had better stay in the TARDIS. The Cloudborn will be arriving for the prenate shortly, so you're in charge. Which basically means let them do what they need to. Meanwhile, Tony and I will just – "

"Go where the voices in our heads tell us to," Tony finishes. Not usually a great idea, but in this case it appears to be the only valid option.

"Right. Well, we'll see you soon, then," Graham says. "Good luck with the, er, medical procedures."

The Doctor and Tony walk together through the whiteness, accompanied by the two Cloudborn. There are no markers to show where they are going and no way to judge what distance they're travelling. The first indication that they're nearing the end of their journey only comes when they see two more Cloudborn waiting up ahead for them.

"We here?" Tony mutters. The landscape doesn't seem to have changed until he looks closer and sees a faint blue haze around the waiting Cloudborn. As they get nearer, the blue deepens until it feels like they're walking in a midnight sky, their world turning a deep violet-blue. "Blue for science, medical things, right? That's how it works on 'Star Trek'..."

"Blue for the TARDIS, and the Doctor," the Doctor says. "As an analogy, I've got to say it's working for me."

"So, if this is the operating theatre, where's all the equipment?"

"A psychic race will operate ... psychically," the Doctor points out.

Tony had suspected as much. He isn't sure if a psychic operation will be better or worse than the usual sort. In one way – the blood and shiny scalpels way – it will be less invasive. In another, it will be more so, because an alien species will once again be delving inside his mind. And although this time it's with his permission, Tony's consent is only being given out of necessity.

"I'll roll out that welcome mat then," he says, feigning nonchalance and trying not to think of psychic scalpels. Are they a thing? And does he really want to know?

They draw to a halt before the – what are they? Medic Cloudborn? - and a whisper in Tony's mind requests that he kneels. He does so, and the Doctor follows suit, changing position so that she faces him. Psychic instructions, Tony guesses. The medic Cloudborn move noiselessly to stand one behind each of them. Meanwhile, the - guardian? - Cloudborn go either side of Tony and the Doctor, enclosing them in the centre of a Cloudborn square.

Maybe this set-up is meant to be reassuring. Or maybe it's meant to keep them in place. All Tony knows is that he doesn't like it. He tries to fight back the feelings of unease, horribly aware of his heart racing and his breathing tightening.

Then the Cloudborn unfurl their wings.

A rush of air blows across Tony's face like the breath of angels as their huge, luminous pinions sweep out in a single synchronised movement. And when the tips of those wings come together high above his and the Doctor's heads, Tony's world goes white again and soft … and suffocating.

The Cloudborn behind the Doctor encircles her head in a net of long fingers, and Tony feels a light touch on his own head as the movement is replicated by the Cloudborn at his back. It doesn't hurt, but he still finds himself fighting to control his increasing panic. Shit, he's starting to spiral again and –

"Tony," the Doctor says. "Tony, look at me."

He looks. Her eyes, clear and green, anchor him. The way Pepper's did. At least, those times when he listened and let her in.

"It's an adrenaline surge, remember?" The Doctor reaches out, cupping the back of his neck and drawing their foreheads together. Her breath is light and warm. "Go with it, Tony. Better yet, chase it down! Okay?"

"Okay," Tony manages. And then his attention is distracted by an awareness of something different, something fresh, rippling and rising in his mind. A clean, pure wave of … what? Affection? Gratitude?

A small pale figure appears suddenly in his peripheral vision, fixing itself against the wall of feathers like a faded photo.

"Junior?" Tony's eyes widen in surprise. "Hey, kiddo. Come to say goodbye? That's great. Just … don't hold on to too many of my bad habits, will you? Or, actually, any of them."

His panic starts to ebb away and in its place, there's a sudden strange lassitude settling throughout his body, and he sinks into it. The Doctor's hand is warm and firm on his neck, but his vision is turning fuzzy and he has to blink to keep his eyes open.

"Nice knowing you, Junior." He's aware of his voice slurring, his senses starting to numb. "Have a great … "

And then, a long time later, Tony wakes up.

Which is to say it feels like a long time later, but it could've been just a few minutes for all he knows: his perception of time is completely screwed. His senses return in a leisurely way, probably because there isn't much for them to sense. Still the same empty whiteness in front of his eyes, perhaps a touch more gauzy and cloudy than before. There's the sound of light, unhurried breathing beside him and his own heartbeat. And a fresh, intense aroma that he can't properly place. The scent of earth after a thunderstorm, maybe.

"Petrichor," the Doctor whispers next to him. "The smell of dust after rain. Of course!"

"Of course," Tony echoes, none the wiser, but relieved to discover that, for once, he has a voice that isn't run ragged because he's screamed his way into unconsciousness. His head doesn't hurt, either. And that's definitely a bonus. "Why 'of course'?"

"Old memory of mine." The Doctor says no more, but he hears a small sigh.

A bittersweet sort of memory, then, Tony judges and doesn't press for details. He stays quiet for a moment. So he and the Doctor are – where? Whatever they've been laid on looks indistinguishable from the ground, but it feels more like a mattress. Not the body-hugging ones, the supportive ones with a cushiony top.

Tony moves slightly and is aware immediately that his battle aches and pains have completely gone. When he touches his face experimentally, he finds that the bruising there has also disappeared. And, for good measure, the mark on the palm of his right hand has also been wiped out.

"Looks like I'm fixed and good to go," he says. "Did the, er, treatment work on you? Have the memories gone?"

"The Cloudborn collective consciousness has. I've still got the memories of what we found out in Kimboray."

"Same here."

"So how are you feeling?" the Doctor asks.

That was a good question. "Honestly? Like I've had the best night's sleep ever."

"Interesting. I suspect the Cloudborn used some soothing techniques to aid your sleep along with the mind un-entanglement and removal of alien tech."

"Then that was very thoughtful of them." Tony drops his hand back to his side and stares up at … nothing, really. "I feel like I'm floating on a cloud. Could even be in heaven. No harps, though. So I'm guessing we're still on planet Aestar."

"Is that what you think heaven is? Clouds and harps?" The Doctor makes a sound of amusement.

"Hope not. Sounds dull. And I'd probably end up in the other place. I've always been more fire and brimstone." Tony turns his head to face the Doctor. She looks ridiculously chilled, like she's relaxing in a spa.

"Really?" The Doctor rolls over onto her side and props herself up on one elbow, peering at him intently. "Now why would you think that?"

"Because people have died. Because of me."

The Doctor considers this. "But other people are alive. Because of you."

"Which you know, because –"

"Which I know because in your world you're a superhero. You're Iron Man. And that has to mean something."

It means something all right. Tony reflects for a moment on exactly what that moniker represents – all the light and shade it encompasses – and then says, "But I'm guessing in your universe, you're pretty much a superhero yourself. Going off all that 'look me up' spiel you gave the Venari."

"Well, the name of the Doctor is one that has been known to echo through time and space," the Doctor allows.

"And that sounds pretty damn superheroic to me."

The Doctor sighs. "Does it? I'm afraid the reasons why it echoes aren't always heroic. Not from certain points of view. Here I am, new me, new dance … but I'm still just a madwoman in a box. I travel through all of space and all of time, which is often beautiful, but sometimes terrible. And it always comes down to the same thing in the end. Because you're right, there are monsters out there and sometimes they're us."

"Yeah, I understood about half of that. The 'new me' stuff is a bit ... " Tony waves his hand. "But you're a good person. You have rules. Like not breaking alien planets, not killing people, and so on."

"Tony, good people don't need rules." The Doctor's voice turns quiet and stripped of all good humour. "You might want to think about why I do."

Tony stares at her.

He's come to know the Doctor as eccentric and brilliant, possessed of an intellect that dwarfs his own and a radiant smile that lights up a room. And he's seen how she's fierce and principled, with a core of adamantine, able to face down her enemies without so much as flinching. But he's not seen her like this. She suddenly looks old and he has the crazy impression that her eyes are holding the weight of centuries.

But it's more than that. The face the Doctor chooses to present to the world is bright and sunny but, just for a moment, Tony catches a glimpse of hidden darkness, a secret self momentarily exposed. And with it comes a disconcerting flash of something indefinably and implacably alien.

"We're none of us perfect," she says, blinking fast as if to wipe out unwelcome memories. " We just have to do the best we can, for as long as we can. That's all anyone can ever do."

"So what happens if your best isn't good enough?" Tony voices the fear that haunts him.

There's an old image in his mind. He's looking across at the Avengers lying slaughtered on a cold, dark battlefield and thinking he could've saved them and he hadn't. It would be nice to shake the whole thing off as just Maximoff's witchy vision, but he knows it's more than that. He's always known.

"Speaking from experience?" The Doctor's expression turns pensive. "You lose your reason for a time. Then you rediscover your moral compass. Dust yourself off. Get back on your feet. And you do whatever needs doing."

"Ad infinitum? Huh. That's … bleak."

"Yes. It is. And those times when we fail completely to save the ones we care about? That will never not hurt. But people like you and me, we dance on the edge between light and dark, and we live in a place where there are no rules except the ones we make, and sometimes the only choices in front of us are bad ones."

"So you pick the one that does least damage."

"Least damage to others," the Doctor amends quietly. "That's the price we agree to pay."

"Part of the hero gig. I hear you." Tony turns on his side to face her properly. "So can you ever stop?"

"Being the Doctor?" She gives a rueful smile. "No, I can't. And don't think I haven't tried. But it's not a title, it's who I am."

"I get that. I'm Iron Man. I don't become Iron Man when I put on the suit, I put on the suit because I am Iron Man. I protect the Earth, and most of all I protect the people I love." Tony hesitates a moment and then offers up the truth he tries so hard to hide – from himself, from Pepper. Especially from Pepper. "Truth is, I don't know how to stop. Or even if I really want to."

"Yes, and then there's that little conundrum as well." The Doctor sighs, clearly considering that Tony's words apply equally to her.

"So I guess I'm stuck with it. Unless one day I don't make it back."

"I guess you are. And not making it back is always a possibility. It's just one we don't like to dwell on."

Despite their proximity, neither of them can quite meet the other's eyes any more. Tony thinks that each of them is lost in memories of times when death came close to calling. Even this little vacation had turned on dime at some points.

Then the Doctor sits up and gives herself a tiny shake. "But, as someone I know once said, 'everything's got to end sometime, otherwise nothing would ever get started'."

"That's true," Tony says after due consideration. "And you know what? I think that also applies to this vacation. Should we make a move to leave? Not that it isn't fun being here with you, shooting the breeze, but we could be in real danger of turning into those guests, the ones that never know when the party's over."

"And the rest of Team TARDIS will be wondering where we are and maybe getting worried."

"You think? I think they'll be drinking tea and eating all your custard creams."

The Doctor gives him a look of mock horror. "Well, in that case we need to get back straight away."

The Cloudborn come back into view, almost as if they'd never been away at all but were waiting for the right moment to make themselves known. Tony receives a mind message, of sorts, indicating that, yes, there is no actual hurry but they can indeed move if they so wish.

Once Tony and the Doctor work out that they are on a bed – well, more of a raised platform – they get off it and it dissolves away with only the slightest whisper; Tony guesses this is Block Transfer Computation in action. They follow the Cloudborn back to the TARDIS, where the Doctor turns and inclines her head in respect to their guardian angels. Tony follows suit.

"It was very good to meet you," she says, smiling up at them. "And thank you for responding so quickly to my request for access and assistance."

The Cloudborn's mental communication indicates that she is welcome and that they could do no less for people who brought their lost – chick? – home to them. Oh, and they wish Tony and the Doctor well in all their – quests? Missions? Explorations in self-knowledge? The TARDIS translator can't seem to find an adequate English word or phrase to encapsulate exactly what the Cloudborn are wishing them, but that's the general gist of it.

Tony steps inside the TARDIS after the Doctor, where they are both greeted by Yaz, Graham and Ryan – in no particular order – crowding around them and asking questions which the Doctor does her best to answer. As it turns out, she'd lost consciousness shortly after Tony and so isn't able to tell them very much at all. Tony opts out of this exchange to go check on the Iron Man suit, which is a lot easier to get to when there isn't a big biopod taking up floor space.

"So it's all over, then," Graham says as the Doctor draws her report to a close. "Mission complete."

"Almost," the Doctor qualifies as she crosses over to the console. "I just need to input the code the Cloudborn gave me so we can leave. I wonder how long we were actually gone for … "

"Long enough for my suit to charge up." Tony disconnects the cable and sends the suit into sentry mode, running checks as he does so. "The tendril's gone back to the Matrix," he reports, and then raises his voice a fraction. "TARDIS – have you run the calculations for – "

"Ah, no," the Doctor interrupts, raising her voice a fraction higher. "Please don't address my TARDIS like she's your – " She flounders a moment.

"Virtual assistant?" Yaz supplies. "That's how you address a smart speaker. Sounds a bit, well, demeaning to do it to the TARDIS."

"Yes! What she said!" The Doctor gives Yaz a quick nod of appreciation. "That! Don't do that!"

Tony feels this is a slight over-reaction to a perfectly reasonable way to communicate with an intelligent control and communication system, albeit one belonging to a sentient being. "I addressed her that way before. And she was fine about it."

"In an emergency, once you'd initiated the protocol I gave you? Of course she was. But that's not how I like to do things," the Doctor says. Her fingers skip pointedly across the console. "I'll check whether she's worked out the coordinates for your return."

"I see. You prefer a hands on approach."

"Generally speaking, yes. It's worked for me for a long, long time. And I see no reason to change it." The Doctor softens that with a smile as she looks up. "The good news is that the calculations are complete and I now have the means to safely send you back home. We just need to hop back to the Kyanicia Rift. Inputting coordinates now. Here we go."

"Looks like you're all sorted, then, Tony," Graham says, appearing a little regretful at the thought of saying goodbye. Which is unexpected.

"Maybe when you get back, you can find a way to make up with your ex-mates," Ryan puts in, actually sounding like he thinks that might happen. Which it won't, but … nice thought.

"And your girlfriend," Yaz adds with a teasing lift of her eyebrows. Which … might be more of a possibility.

"And once I've sent you back to where you belong, our mission really will be complete," the Doctor says. Which is – what?

"What do you mean?" Tony asks, giving her a frown. "Saving Junior was the mission. I wasn't the mission."

"Were you not?" The Doctor manages to look smug and coy all at once. "I can do more than one mission at a time, you know. Multi-tasking, very much my thing. The TARDIS takes me where I need to go, remember? And she put me in the right place to rescue you."

That's something Tony hasn't considered. "So what does that mean?" he flips back. "You had to, what? Rescue me to save my love life? Seems a stretch."

"Probably not that," the Doctor says. "Though I wish you well on that score. If that's what you want. And what she wants. Obviously. Have you tried texting and scones?" She looks confused for a moment. Then she shakes her head and gathers her thoughts back together. "The thing is, the TARDIS sometimes sees things a bit more … cosmically."

Cosmically? The implications of that are … what exactly? Intriguing? Alarming? Tony shrugs it off. "Yeah? Well, I'm just a man in a tin can. I know. A gold-titanium alloy … can. And I'm damn sure not everyone you rescue is of cosmic significance. My guess is I just got lucky. Found myself in the right place at the right time."

"Maybe," the Doctor prevaricates. Then, as the TARDIS heralds their arrival at the Rift, she steps away from the console and beckons him. "Now come here."

"Why?" Tony eyes her suspiciously. "Is this – you're not – "

"Group hug? Yes!" The Doctor looks as gleeful as a child. "Yes, we are. Get over here, now!"

"I don't think that's – " Tony finds he no longer has a choice in whole group hug thing because he's being swept up by Yaz, Ryan and Graham and pulled into one anyway. He goes with it. It's easier.

"It was nice knowing you," Yaz tells him. "Even though you were a bit of a, well – "

"Arrogant prat?" Tony suggests. "That's the phrase, right?"

"Yes," says Ryan. "But you're also a genius. And when the chips are down, you come good."

"Thank you. It was nice knowing you all, too." The words start out as rote, courtesy of Tony's many years of media-honed responses. It takes him a moment or two to realise he actually means it. "Hey. Be good. Keep doing your thing."

"You too," Graham says. "I mean, be good at … er … defending your Earth from, well, all the bad things out to get it."

"And stay safe, yeah?" Ryan adds.

They all end the hug awkwardly. Well, they are British, after all. Even the Doctor, when it comes down to it, is a very British sort of alien. Although how the hell that works, Tony has no idea. He suits up and crosses over to stand in the centre of the TARDIS, right on the spot where he'd arrived.

"Time to get you back to doing what you do best." The Doctor watches him from the console, her team right alongside her. She smiles at him; Tony thinks it might be her warmest smile yet. "Are you ready?"

He gives her a quick nod.

And then he drops the helmet, seals himself inside the armour, and waits to go home.


	14. Epilogue: Miss You, Too

Tony tilts his head up and stares at the Iron Man shaped hole in the ceiling of the workshop. He assumes this had been made when he took his unexpected trip to a whole new universe. As a consequence of the hole, a pile of debris has been created in the area underneath it and he'd landed atop it, albeit a little precariously.

"Boss! You're back!" FRIDAY's voice sounds in his ears as he retracts the helmet and comes face to face with Vision, who is hovering at eye level and looking a little confused.

"Hey, FRIDAY, Vis. Miss me?"

"You were gone for exactly one minute and 32.06 seconds," Vision says. "We'd little time to miss you or even raise an alarm before you were on a return trajectory."

"Nice work, Doctor," Tony says, blowing a kiss up into the sky. "Couldn't have done it better myself. Couldn't have done it at all myself, if I'm being honest."

"Did the Mark 47 malfunction?" Vision asks. "It's looking very much the worse for wear considering the extremely short duration of your absence, even though you appear entirely undamaged."

Tony jumps down from the rubble and then steps out of the suit. "It didn't malfunction. The Mark 47 performed exceptionally well under pressure. We'll just beat out the dents, give it a fresh lick of paint. Your Mind Stone, on the other hand, had a major hissy fit and took it upon itself to engineer my sudden departure."

Vision raises a hand to the Stone in his forehead and looks concerned as he glides down to next to Tony. "I felt a slight power surge, but I hadn't connected the two events. My apologies."

"Accepted. I'm not even sure if malfunctioned is the right word for what it did. I think it has its own agenda, Vis, and you need to keep that in ... well, in mind, as it were. This time a Rift opened near enough to Earth for it to latch onto for its own purposes. No telling what it might pick up another time."

"I'll re-examine my monitoring level and range," Vision promises. "Clearly I must be more vigilant in future. Did the Stone send you to the Rift?"

"Worse. It jettisoned me through it to another Universe. Where I was rescued by the Doctor, who had the skill and technology to send me back again. And that's a story for another time. Right now, there's a hole in my roof that needs fixing before it rains. I'm currently leery of rain. No matter what colour it is. It needs to stay outside and keep the hell away from me."

"Already on it," FRIDAY informs him. Then she adds, "Boss, have you been entertaining another AI in your suit? Because it feels like something - or someone - has gotten way too familiar with my systems in there."

She sounds decidedly territorial. If she'd been a cat, Tony guesses her fur would be fluffed up and her tail twitching. "Yeah, it was an emergency thing that ... happened. No harm done. Pretty sure the TARDIS was smart enough to extract herself without causing any snafus."

"So you've been two-timing me. Am I supposed to be okay about this?"

"Yes, yes you are. Because you're an AI and I'm the boss. And because it was a one-off. I'm not going to be doing it again. That help any?"

"It might," FRIDAY says, a little grudgingly. "Boss."

"So we're tight again? Oh good." Tony starts sorting through the scattered debris on the worktop. "In that case, FRIDAY, be a dear and send out for cheeseburgers. All I've had is hardtack and tea and the offer of a cheese and pickle sandwich. No, wait. My mistake. I wasn't offered even the chance to refuse a cheese and pickle sandwich. Hey, Vision, did I miss anything significant during the one minute and 32.06 seconds of my absence? Or did you all get along just fine without me?"

"Ms Potts called and left you a message." Vision's voice is impeccably courteous but still manages to convey a note of optimism. Although maybe Tony's imagination is supplying the latter.

"She did?" Tony tries for a nonchalant response, which doesn't even fool himself. "What did she say?"

"Replaying message, Boss," FRIDAY responds.

"Hello, Tony," Pepper says. She sounds bright and purposeful. "We haven't spoken since you came back from Siberia. I'd like to talk to you again." She pauses. Her voice turns noticeably softer. "I'd like to see you again." Another pause, and then she says firmly, "Because I've had enough time to think. You gave me the space I asked for, and I'm grateful for that. And now I know I want to work out how to make things right between us. If that's not what you want, that's fine. I mean, no, it's not fine." She checks herself, and there's a slight tremor in her voice. "It wouldn't be fine at all. I miss you."

"Message ends," says FRIDAY.

"Miss you, too, Pep," Tony whispers after a moment during which he absolutely wasn't trying to blink back tears. He clears his throat. He thinks he will need to put in a little more work on FRIDAY's protocols around privacy.

"Do you want me to send Ms Potts an answer, Boss?"

"No," Tony says quickly. "I'll speak to her myself. In private. Now, in fact. Right now."

Vision gives him a look of what's best described as respectful compassion. "I've no wish to intrude on your private life, Tony, but I will say that I hope your conversation with Ms Potts results in an accommodation which proves felicitous for you both."

"Is that a fancy way of saying 'good luck'?" Tony flashes him a weak smile. "I'll take it. Felicitous accommodation. Sounds ... right."

It could be right. If they could make it work. If he could make it work. Pepper would have expectations, perfectly reasonable ones like try not to get himself killed. Which the Accords made a whole lot easier because – unless the balloon went up – he should only be in active combat when the United Nations deemed it necessary. He most definitely shouldn't be acting as a vigilante, jumping into every conflict he made his business and that, right there, is his compromise. And maybe one day he'd even get out that crappy cellphone Rogers sent him and dial the damned number. Maybe. That was a big maybe.

But right now? The thought that he hasn't entirely blown his chances of sharing his life with the woman he loves, that Pepper loves him enough to want to come back, that means _everything_.

And saving the world? That can wait another day.

  
END


End file.
